Barcelona will host this December the World Padel Tour final

Barcelona will host next December the headquarters of Estrella Damm Master Final 2022, a benchmark sporting event for padel lovers, one of the sports that has registered the highest growth in fans in the last decade. Specifically, at the end of 2021 in Spain there were almost 97,000 federated players, double that of 2013. It is estimated, however, that there are almost six million padel practitioners, a figure that far exceeds tennis. Behind this authentic boom is the Damm brewing group, sole owner of the World Padel Tour circuit, promoter of this final, which will take place at the Palau Sant Jordi between December 15 and 18.

"Barcelona will dress in padel," said this Tuesday the president of World Padel Tour, Ramón Agenjo, shareholder and director of the Damm group, during the signing of a collaboration agreement with the Barcelona City Council. According to Agenjo, this edition of the competition final will achieve "historic figures" and he announced that there will be "many surprises."

"Sport and major sporting events are part of the city's DNA and we cannot miss the opportunity to link ourselves more with padel, a sport that every day gains new followers and to which we predict a great future," said the Deputy Mayor for Economy, Jaume Collboni. The agreement signed with the consistory foresees the possibility of extending for two more years to be the venue for this relevant event which, thus, could fall to the city until 2024.

World Padel Tour is a consolidated circuit with 24 national and international events that has positioned itself ahead of other major centenary competitions of other majority sports. Currently, 19 different countries have a World Padel Tour tournament, a competition that already has a presence on four continents: Africa, Asia, America and Europe.

Its media impact is also reaching very notable goals. Thus, more than 100 countries have the broadcasting rights for the competitions on television channels, with 2.8 million people following the matches live either on television, World Padel Tour TV or YouTube.

Spain is the third country in Europe with the most padel courts, with a total of 14,000, behind Germany and France, according to a report prepared by Deloitte and Playtomic, reports 2Playbook. In addition, in this last fiscal year, the number of padel courts exceeded for the first time the number of tennis courts, which stands at 13,385. By number of clubs, Spain leads the European ranking with a total of 3,811, far ahead of Italy, which is in second position with 1,452.

Recently, Damm has recovered 100% of the shares of the company that owns World Padel Tour by acquiring the 20% that was held by the Rucio Investments fund. In parallel, the group has signed former tennis player Àlex Corretja as assistant to the presidency of World Padel Tour.