A New Professional Circuit on the horizon: unveiled Ultimate Padel Tour
If with the now well-known merger of the World Padel Tour and Premier Padel into a single professional circuit, 2024 would mark a new year zero for Padel already been outlined, news that would confirm this trend has been in the air for several days.
A new professional padel circuit was unveiled just a few days ago, and although all the details have yet to be revealed, we can already give some information in this article.
It will be called Ultimate Padel Tour, a professional circuit of 15 stages with a price money of 280,000€ each.
The particularity of this circuit is that 12 of the 15 stages will take place entirely in Spain, and the choice is by no means random. Here, as many as 13 professional tournaments took place in the 2022 season, while in 2023 only 4, and Ultimate Padel Tour unquestionably represents an excellent opportunity to bring a large number of tournaments back to Spanish soil while also being able to count on relevant spectator frames, given the great interest in padel in the country.
In addition to this, most of the high-level players reside right on Iberian soil and, for those who are not yet part of the padel elite, moving from one country to another is a rather expensive and not very sustainable solution and this new circuit would represent a turning point in this sense.
In each event, 48 pairs will participate, with eight of the pairs having made it through the qualifying rounds. The tour will arrange a Master Final at the end of the year where the best 16 players will participate.
Ultimate Padel Tour writes this about the ranking:
"The UPT will welcome all players, from all existing circuits, so its initial first rankings will be created for the first year, using the various rankings that have existed to date. We understand that the WPT ranking is the one that is the most important, without forgetting the need to take into account the FIP and A1P rankings. The rankings for 2024 will be as follows: 60% WPT, 25% FIP, and 15% A1P."
The tour also writes that they will offer financial support for hotel, transfer, and travel and no penalties for participating in other competitions that are not related to the tour.
The first leg is already set for February and as we wait to know more information about this competition, we are all curious to find out how this initiative will be able to impact the padel movement and represent a major reality for the sport.
