Overtaking tennis, the number of members exceeds football

For the first time the Italian Football Federation is no longer the one with the largest number of members, but has been overtaken by the Italian Tennis and Padel Federation.

The overtaking took place in 2024, writes Il Sole 24 Ore which has viewed the periodic 'Coni-Fns-Dsa Monitoring' report, the census of affiliated associations and members of the 48 sports federations, the 15 associated disciplines and the 14 sports promotion bodies.

For the third consecutive year the volume of overall members in Italy is growing and has reached the historic record of 6,069,891 (+7.7% between 2023 and 2024), Federtennis has 1,162,477, 20.2% of the total federal registrations, against 1,123,054 of FIGC members (19.5%), while volleyball remains far behind (359,797), basketball (320,769) and athletics (292,599).

The gap - underlines the economic daily - "between the first two Federations is limited to around 40 thousand units but in 2025 the Fitp has further increased to 1,254,153 members". In this period the entire supply chain of the movement has expanded: the affiliated clubs have exceeded 4 thousand units, the tennis and padel schools have become more than 2,500, the technicians have reached 14 thousand and the match officials have reached 10 thousand units.

"It would be simplistic to attribute all these increases to the 'Sinner effect' - writes Il Sole -. But the victories were the product and not the cause of the change. The model "engineered" by the federation led since 2001 by Angelo Binaghi (and which at the time had 130 thousand members) was born from a precise choice: to transform large international events into generators of revenues to be systematically reinvested in the base and in training".

Revenues will also overtake in 2025: "The production value of Federtennis exceeded 240 million, while that of the FIGC stood at 214 million, thanks to the absence of major international competition".

Buonfiglio: 'Tennis has more members than football thanks to champions and events'

"They are also the characters who stimulate sporting activity. When boys and girls identify someone to emulate there is this effect, even the organization of large events such as internationals or the ATP in Turin have an impact." Thus the president of CONI, Luciano Buonfiglio, comments on the data published by Il Sole 24 Ore which shows tennis and padel surpassing football in the number of members.

"Congratulations to President Binaghi, I saw the closing of the budget and the number of members who deserve all the attention of the Olympic Committee and good luck to Sinner", he added.