FIP general assembly: from new members, to equal prize money to the new senior circuit

As of today, eight new countries officially join the International Padel Federation: four from Europe, two from Asia, one from Africa and one from South America. Thus, the expansion of our sport – which counts 25 million players worldwide – and of the Fip, which now represents 71 federations spread across the five continents, continues. The General Assembly, chaired by Luigi Carraro, approved the applications for admission submitted by Slovakia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Luxembourg, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Tunisia, and Venezuela. The meeting, which has just ended in Rome in the prestigious Sala d’Onore of the CONI (Italian National Olympic Committee) – there was also the official greeting to the delegates by the CONI president Giovanni Malagò – was attended by 92 per cent of those eligible to vote, representing federations from all over the world, in addition to the seven members (the eighth was Kosovo, absent from the Assembly due to bureaucratic problems) of the new countries welcomed into the FIP architecture.

In the general balance of President Luigi Carraro and the various aspects of the FIP’s activities and of the movement, it clearly emerged how fast the movement’s growth has been and still is all over the world, both at the competitive and amateur levels. The president highlighted the importance of the different circuits of the FIP family, underlining how the definitive take-off of the ‘Promises’, the tournaments dedicated to the youngest, is now a reality – a fundamental pivot for the growth and ‘rooting’ of padel all over the world – while in one of the most significant passages, the FIP number one recalled how the Cupra Fip Tour has ‘total’ equal prize money for men and women, a circuit in great expansion that currently has over 120 tournaments in 40 countries. It is, above all, the circuit that most of all is acting as the FIP’s ‘technical-agonistic ambassador’ for the spread of padel in the five continents. Carraro then emphasised the great success of the FIP discipline at the European Games, the sport most followed by the public and the protagonist of an extraordinary spectacle in Krakow’s Market Square, where more than 14,000 people took turns in the stands for the finals. A ‘five-ring’ expedition that was also appreciated and enhanced by the speech of some delegates at the assembly.

Among the novelties listed by Carraro, also the introduction of a new ‘senior’ circuit for players aged 40 and over, divided into age categories. Moreover, focus on the growth of the technical and refereeing sectors, of the relations with the media through the new FIP website that, according to Carraro, will have to be a real virtual ‘club house’ in which to interact with the Federations through documents, proposals, new ideas. The FIP strategy also includes the theme of inclusion, which will be the focus of a specific and detailed project of the Federation itself.