Partnership with Decathlon Kuikma

Padel has no big borders. We’ve seen camps set up at the foot of the Pyramids of Giza, floating in the Stockholm Marina, or with the Iguazu Falls as a backdrop. Natural environments of great media appeal and undoubted charm. It’s harder to imagine them in a shopping mall, especially if it’s a place frequented by four million people a year, considering that in these complexes, every square centimeter is usually dedicated to a potential product from which to make money.

This is exactly what happened in Prato, where Decathlon recently opened a padel court inside its store, perfect for those looking for a racket or soccer ball, a technical shoe, or a city bike. The idea was born from the sporting passion of Maurizio Danesi, Store Leader & Sport Leader Padel, who discovered padel thanks to his Spanish wife and the courts that crowd Barcelona, ​​where padel mania has exploded for several years. “Prato had only two courts,” Danesi recalls, “but through a study by Il Sole 24 Ore, I discovered that the city was first overall in the country for sportsmanship index in racquet sports. This ranking evidently takes into account not only the number of facilities and players, but also a series of factors that indicate a propensity for the sport. This result piqued my curiosity, and I began studying the idea of ​​adding a World Padel Tour court to the store.”

Images from the opening day of the padel court inside the Decathlon store in Prato. The structure was built by an Italian company, Padel Corporation, which guaranteed high quality and safety standards with 8+8 laminated glass. The pitch can be booked via the Polisportiva 2A app.

The advantages were space, sufficient height, and the mission that has always distinguished Decathlon: making sport accessible to as many enthusiasts as possible. The court is managed in collaboration with Polisportiva 2A, which already manages another facility with four tennis courts and two padel courts (soon to be expanded to three). These are pioneers of our sport in the city, as Rudy Fischietti explained: “We are very pleased with this partnership. The court was built by an Italian company, Padel Corporation, with very high safety standards, considering the unique location where it was installed. We chose a panoramic court with 8+8 mm laminated glass.”

“Another priority,” Danesi continues, “was finding a sports association that shared our principles, and Polisportiva 2A was definitely a good choice because the goal isn’t just to create a pay-and-play system, but to contribute to the development of this sport. Nor do we want to compete with other centers, also because we are suppliers given that we cover a rather large territory, which includes the A11 and A1 motorways and extends as far as the Island of Elba. This field aims to be a boost to create attraction towards padel.” A concept shared by Polisportiva 2A: “Just consider that our members are UISP and CSI because we want to promote sporting activity for everyone and that is inclusive, without excluding anyone,” says Fischietti. “We built a court in the city before the boom, and now we don’t want to stop there, but instead organize courses for children and adults, as we already do for tennis, where our school has 130 kids.”

Decathlon and Polisportiva 2A collaborated on this project because they share the same mission: to contribute to the development of padel and make this sport accessible to a greater number of enthusiasts. With the desire to export the experience in Italy and abroad, from Spain to Belgium, from Chile to Argentina.

The padel court at Decathlon can be booked via the sports club’s app (48 euros for 90 minutes, a cost in line with the market) and is located in a provincial context that offers plenty of room for maneuver. There are currently fewer than twenty courts in the province, but several projects are under consideration (and we know that Italian bureaucracy requires implementation times that often exceed twelve months): according to Wikipedia, the province of Prato has 257,000 inhabitants, so there is currently one padel court for every 15,000. The growth potential is therefore enormous, as Polisportiva 2A is well aware, firmly committed to another concept that should be dear to all sports clubs: “We operate within a municipal structure, a facility that therefore belongs to all citizens. But now, even sports clubs must think like businesses, without thinking of living off state subsidies that no longer exist. In five years, our sports club has invested €380,000 without requesting municipal funds, but has been self-financing through its activities. The difference is that it must focus not only on business but also on promotion: we need to find the right balance between the two principles. This is the future of sport.”

In this sense, for three years Decathlon has developed a brand dedicated solely to padel, Kuikma, which offers a complete collection of rackets, shoes, clothing, and accessories, with entry-level products accessible to everyone and a project that starts from the grassroots and reaches all the way to the highest levels, supporting all activities, both amateur and competitive. Furthermore, the location is particularly appropriate because Parco Prato is a large shopping center that allows you to combine sports with other leisure activities, with sport being seen as an opportunity for physical, mental, and cultural well-being. The healthiest way to rediscover the social connection that the pandemic has robbed us of, and that sport can help us rediscover. So much so that Prato hasn’t remained an isolated case because a similar project has already been launched in Taranto and Perugia, with the aim of exporting it abroad, from Spain to Belgium, from Sweden to Mexico, from Chile to Argentina, with the same leitmotif: promoting padel through practice venues. At Decathlon.

Article source and graphic credits: https://padelmagazine.it/attrezzature/the-decathlon-court