Institutionalization of Padel in Brazil: A Frontier Phenomenon

Abstract

Since 1987, Brazilians have incorporated padel into the country’s sporting landscape, and participation has increased markedly in recent years. Despite this growth, scholars have paid little attention to the sport. Athletes, businesspeople, and officials from Argentina and Uruguay played a significant role in the institutionalization of padel in Brazil through a frontier process. Participants from both countries supplied knowledge and techniques that early Brazilian practitioners adopted and reproduced. The relationship was not unidirectional: Brazilian organizers also created economic opportunities for practitioners from neighbouring countries, many of whom travelled there to teach and compete. Historical social and cultural affinities between Argentina, Uruguay and southern Brazil, where padel first developed in the country, provided the context in which these actors built the transnational relationships that shaped the sport’s institutionalization.