World Padel Tour's English record-breaking year in numbers

2021 has proven to be the most successful World Padel Tour season in terms of international figures.

Records of all kinds have been broken in terms of viewing numbers and attendances. Here is a breakdown of the year gone by in terms of statistics!

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Viewing records

World Padel Tour's English live coverage broke every record imaginable in 2021. From most-watched tournament to biggest live audience to most-watched match, no record was safe in the English live coverage.

A new era was also ushered in with the introduction of WorldPadelTourTV, World Padel Tour's new platform. It allows fans to watch more live matches than ever before as well as exclusive video content. For the first time ever in English, matches were broadcast from the round of 16 onward since the CDMX Open, the penultimate tournament of the year.

The record for most-viewed event was broken four times in 2021; First at the Cascais Master, then at the Menorca Open, again at the CDMX Open and finally at the Estrella Damm Master Final 2021.

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The latter has truly smashed the record for the most-viewed event. While the CDMX Open was the first tournament to garner over 300.000 viewers, the Master Final reached almost 500.000 views in the live coverage. This is more than double the number of views compared to the 2020 Master Final, and 70% more than the viewing record pre-2021.

The biggest live audience record was broken earlier in the season. The Sardegna Open final, where Franco Stupaczuk and Alejandro Ruiz beat Paquito Navarro and Martín Di Nenno in straight sets, reached a peak of 5,579 live viewers on YouTube, a record that still stands.

On average, 2021 has seen a 25.6% increase in live viewing numbers on YouTube compared to 2020. However, within 2021 itself, there has been a big increase between the first and second half of the season, which is split by a summer break. To be exact, a 58.6% increase.

Attendance records

Not only were records for broadcasting viewing numbers broken - so were live attendance figures. While the outright attendance record, set at the 2019 Master Final in Barcelona with 9.585 fans, was not broken, the 2021 Estrella Damm Master Final came very close. The Madrid Arena was capped at 9.500 because of Covid restrictions, with a sell-out crowd on Saturday. The quarter-finals on Friday, however, broke the record for highest-attended quarter-finals ever with almost 8.000 people in attendance.

Earlier in the year, the Malmö Padel Open 2021 broke another record. With over 6.800 people at the Malmö Arena, it was not only the third-highest attendance ever at the time, but also became the biggest live audience of all time outside of Spain.

READ: Record-breaking Malmö Padel Open crowd makes history

Only Madrid and Barcelona have housed bigger crowds, which is another indicator of how much the competition is growing worldwide.

Website visits

World Padel Tour's website, the place you are now if you are reading this, has also seen significant increase. More content than ever is being provided on it, including match reports from pre-qualifying until the final of every tournament

Page views have increased an astonishing 154,67% compared to 2020, with over five million visits in 2021 on the English branch of the website.

Social media

Social media too saw a very significant increase in 2021. Over 700.000 followers were gained between Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and TikTok throughout the calendar year. It is by far the most increase for a year on social media, with both Instagram and TikTok growing by almost 70%.

World Padel Tour's YouTube channel, where all live broadcasts in English were shown throughout the season worldwide, gained over 200.000 subscribers in 2021.

International broadcasting

Besides the live coverage, World Padel Tour has also been broadcast on television in more countries than ever before. The men's final of the Estrella Damm Master Final 2021 was broadcast in a total of 84 countries, which too is a record for the most televised World Padel Tour match in history.

? Thanks to all our 2021 broadcasters!

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2021 has proven to be a resounding success on all accounts. World Padel Tour would like to thank its fans worldwide for making this growth possible. 2022 will be the most international season ever for the competition, with many international tournaments already announced like the season opener in Miami!