Netherlands growth: Competitive padel matches up 28% in 2024

Preliminary figures from governing body the KNLTB indicate that around 15,000 teams participated in its padel competitions in 2024.

Author

Jonathan Dyson
December 13, 2024

The KNLTB, the governing body for padel and tennis in the Netherlands, has said that the rapid growth of padel in the country looks set to continue in 2025 after reporting a 28% increase in the number of competitive padel matches in 2024.

The organisation has shared its preliminary figures for the year, and said the number of KNLTB padel and tennis competitions has grown from 3,800 in 2023 to 4,200 in 2024, while the number of competition teams registered has increased from 65,000 to 68,000. Of those teams, around 15,000 participated in KNLTB padel competitions and over 53,000 in its tennis competitions.

The body added that there were over 300,000 tennis and padel players who participated in its competitions in 2024.

The figures are the latest indication of the continued expansion of padel in the Netherlands. According to the International Padel Federation (FIP)’s first World Padel Report, published in May 2024, the country had an estimated 586 padel clubs and 2,418 courts in April 2024, with a population to courts ratio of 7,286 (by comparison, in Spain that figure was 2,970).

The number of amateur players was estimated as being around 570,000, with an amateurs to courts ratio of 236.

In Playtomic’s most recent Global Padel Report, the Netherlands was ranked third in terms of growth in interest in the sport, behind only Denmark and Portugal and ahead of neighbouring Belgium. The ranking was based on Google searches as at May 2024 compared with the same point last year.

The report estimated that as at January 2024 the Netherlands had 1,733 padel courts – the fifth highest in the world, following the addition of 288 courts in 2023, an increase of 20%. By comparison, and ranking fourth, Belgium had 1,763 courts after adding 368 in 2023, with growth of 26%.

The Netherlands has become one of the biggest padel markets in the world. Image credit: KNLTB.

Commenting on its latest figures, the KNLTB said: “The fact that competitive padel is still growing considerably every year … is not really a surprise because the sport is still growing fast in the Netherlands.”

It noted that the figures for tennis were also on the rise “for the first time in years”, and said that more tennis matches had already been played by mid-October in 2024 than in the whole of 2023. 

“It is expected that a total of about 4.5 million [tennis] matches will have been played by the end of 2024, a growth of almost 8%,” it said.

However, the KNLTB’s competitive tennis and padel manager Rogier van Veen acknowledged that there are challenges for both sports. "The match participation of youth players is a concern, and in addition there are still too many matches that are insufficiently equal,” he said. “There are still opportunities, for example, in creating on-demand match offerings in order to respond more to the flexibilisation of society."

Last month, the KNLTB announced that from January 1, 2025 it will introduce a new version of its rating model for padel to ensure players are matched against others of similar ability more often.

The KNLTB said next year it will also “continue to strengthen and improve the range of competitions based on data and research.”

The organisation added that its “competitive tennis and padel department will focus on creating and organising more fun through a more equal range of competitions, on unburdening organisers and officials through improved digital services and the use of data to enable clubs to organise more matches for more players in 2025 and beyond.”