Premier Padel, FIP and A1: How Professional Padel Is Organised

Premier Padel

Premier Padel is the flagship tour, backed by the International Padel Federation and funded through Qatar Sports Investments. It carries the deepest draws, the biggest prize money and almost all of the players you will see named as the best in the world.

Its events are tiered: Majors sit at the top, with P1 and P2 events beneath them. The tier decides how many ranking points are on offer, which is why a first-round exit at a Major can be worth more than a title at a smaller event.

The FIP tour underneath it

Below Premier Padel sits the Cupra FIP Tour, which is where the professional game is actually broad. Its own tiers run from Rise and Star at the entry level up through Gold and Platinum, and the whole structure works as a ladder: results here earn the ranking points that get a pair into Premier Padel draws.

This is the layer most people never watch and where most professional padel is played. If you have heard of a player who seems to have appeared from nowhere, they almost certainly spent a season here first.

A1 Padel

A1 Padel was a separate circuit with its own calendar, strongest in South America, running independently rather than as a tier of the FIP structure. It cancelled its 2025 season and has not returned; its players have largely moved to Premier Padel and the FIP tours, and bookmakers no longer price it.

For a viewer it is a genuine alternative rather than a lower division, though the fields are smaller and bookmaker coverage of it is thinner.

What happened to World Padel Tour

For years World Padel Tour was the professional circuit, and much of the sport’s history and archive footage carries its name. It ran in parallel with Premier Padel through a period of open conflict over who controlled the calendar and where players were allowed to compete.

That ended with the tours consolidating behind Premier Padel. WPT no longer runs, but the name still appears in older results, rankings and highlight reels — so if you see it, you are looking at history rather than a current competition.

How the tiers show up here

Every tournament on PadBets carries a level, and it decides more than a label. Premier Padel, A1 and the upper FIP tiers are treated as professional. Cupra FIP Rise and Star are challenger events, which share the professional rating pool because those are the same players on their way up. Federation, regional and club circuits are amateur and are rated in their own ladder.

That is why a club result never moves a professional’s Power Rating, and why bookmakers appear on some tournament pages and not others: nobody prices a regional circuit, so those pages carry results, head-to-head and ratings instead of odds.

Which one to follow

If you want the best players and the biggest matches, follow Premier Padel. If you want to see who is arriving, the FIP tour is where it happens first and where our challenger coverage sits. If you are betting, coverage follows prize money: the Majors and P1 events are priced deeply, and the further down the ladder you go the fewer books you will find.

Frequently asked questions