From Sinner to a €230 Million Federation, Italian Tennis Is No Longer Chasing Football. It Has Passed It.The boom in Italian tennis is no longer just a story of rankings and titles. It is now visible at the box office, in the federation's accounts, and in a transformation of Italian sporting culture that nobody predicted and that is still accelerating.Anyone hoping to catch Jannik Sinner at the Italian Open at the Foro Italico this May may be in for a surprise, not because of his performance, but because of the price. Entry to the grounds for early rounds starts at around €70 on the secondary market, with first round day sessions on the main Centrale court already listed from €120 upward. Quarter-final sessions begin above €300, and premium seats for the final stretch well beyond €1,000. Even grounds tickets for the opening days of the tournament, which offer access to the outer courts and practice areas, have sold out on the official site for several dates and are trading at a premium on resale platforms. This is a tournament that, not long ago, was described by its own organisers as being in decline. The Numbers Behind the Shift In 2025 the Italian Tennis and Padel Federation recorded revenues exceeding €230 million, surpassing the Italian Football Federation for the first time in the history of Italian sport. The FIGC, hit by the absence of a major international tournament, came in at just over €200 million. The gap had already been narrowing: in 2024 tennis reached €209 million against football's €224 million, but 2025 marked a decisive crossing. The federation expects to exceed €250 million in 2026.  The tennis federation has now held the revenue primacy that football had maintained for eighty years.  That sentence deserves a moment of reflection. Eighty years. In a country where football is not merely a sport but a structuring principle of national identity, where Serie A clubs command the front pages of newspapers regardless of what is happening in politics, and where the word calcio functions as shorthand for sport itself, the idea that a tennis federation could generate more revenue than the FIGC would have seemed, a decade ago, like a category error. How It Happened The transformation did not begin with Sinner. It began with a long-term strategic decision by FITP president Angelo Binaghi to reposition the Internazionali d'Italia in Rome as a world-class event rather than a mid-tier clay court tournament struggling to fill its own seats. At the start of the 2000s the Roman tournament was in decline. Today it has become an event capable of producing an economic impact estimated at €900 million over roughly two weeks, with more than 400,000 attendances and direct ticket revenues exceeding €35 million in 2025, up 22 percent on 2024. The Nitto ATP Finals in Turin, secured by the federation in 2021, produced an estimated total economic impact of €591 million in 2025, almost six times the first edition, generating nearly €100 million in tax revenues against a state contribution to the event of €13.7 million per year. Over 70 percent of the federation's total revenues now derives from hosting international competitions on Italian soil. Sinner's results then poured fuel on a fire that was already burning. Italian tennis players wrote pages of history in 2025, winning five Grand Slams among them. The federation now counts 1.2 million registered members, over 200 percent more than in 2020, 4,465 affiliated clubs, 2,553 tennis and padel schools, and around 15,000 coaches. Tennis is approaching football's participation figures, with 6.2 million players nationally against football's 6.5 million.  According to Nielsen research, racquet sports including padel, pickleball, squash and badminton now have around 20 million fans in Italy, more than volleyball, athletics, swimming and basketball combined.  The Padel Factor The federation's decision to incorporate padel, renaming itself the Federazione Italiana Tennis e Padel in 2023, was strategically astute. Padel has grown faster in Italy than almost anywhere else in Europe, converting millions of recreational players who would never have picked up a tennis racquet into registered federation members and bringing with them club memberships, coaching fees, and court hire revenues that have transformed the federation's financial base from the ground up. The padel boom is not Sinner's doing. It is a separate and parallel revolution that the federation had the foresight to absorb rather than resist. What This Means for the Italian Open The 2026 Internazionali BNL d'Italia, now in its 83rd edition, runs at the Foro Italico from 28 April to 17 May. This year sees the debut of the new SuperTennis Arena, designed to improve the spectator experience and add dynamism to the layout of the grounds. A tennis court is also being installed in Piazza del Popolo, where visitors can watch training sessions and exhibition matches free of charge.  That last detail is worth noting. The free court at Piazza del Popolo is a gesture toward accessibility at a tournament that has, in every other dimension, moved firmly upmarket. The combination of limited seating, global demand, and the star power of Sinner has pushed ticket prices into territory more commonly associated with major international events or luxury entertainment. What was once considered a relatively accessible sport to watch live is increasingly becoming a premium experience. For the federation, this is a success story. For the ordinary Italian fan who wants to see Sinner play in Rome, it presents a straightforward dilemma: follow the sport from home on SuperTennis, or pay a price that would have seemed extraordinary for a tennis ticket in Italy just five years ago. Football's Problem The FIGC's position is not simply that tennis has got better. It is that football has had a structural bad run at the federation level: no World Cup, no European Championship hosted in Italy, no major international event to drive revenue. For the FIGC, reaching the North American World Cup this summer is now essential to close the gap. The federation that missed three consecutive World Cups needs the tournament more than it might like to admit. Whether football recovers its primacy depends partly on results on the pitch, partly on Italy's World Cup fate, and partly on whether the structural growth of tennis and padel continues at its current rate. The smart money is on the latter. Italian tennis did not overtake Italian football because football got worse. It overtook it because someone built a better machine, found the right players at the right moment, and turned a sport that Italians once associated with country clubs and clay courts into a national obsession with a federation to match. The prices at the Foro Italico are the proof.  

The boom in Italian tennis is no longer just a story of rankings and titles. It is now visible at the box office, in the federation's accounts, and in a transformation of Italian sporting culture that nobody predicted and that is still accelerating. Anyone hoping to catch Jannik Sinner at the Italian Open at the Foro Italico this May may be in for a surprise, not because of his performance, but because of the price. Entry to the grounds for early rounds starts at around €70 on the secondary market, with first round day sessions on the main Centrale court already listed from €120 upward. Quarter-final sessions begin above €300, and premium seats for the final stretch well beyond €1,000. Even grounds tickets for the opening days of the tournament, which offer access to the outer courts and practice areas, have sold out on the official site for several dates and are trading at a premium on resale platforms. This is a tournament that, not long ago, was described by its own organisers as being in decline. In 2025 the Italian Tennis and Padel Federation recorded revenues exceeding €230 million, surpassing the Italian Football Federation for the first time in the history of Italian sport. The FIGC, hit by the absence of a major international tournament, came in at just over €200 million. The gap had already been narrowing: in 2024 tennis reached €209 million against football's €224 million, but 2025 marked a decisive crossing. The federation expects to exceed €250 million in 2026.  The tennis federation has now held the revenue primacy that football had maintained for eighty years.  That sentence deserves a moment of reflection. Eighty years. In a country where football is not merely a sport but a structuring principle of national identity, where Serie A clubs command the front pages of newspapers regardless of what is happening in politics, and where the word calcio functions as shorthand for sport itself, the idea that a tennis federation could generate more revenue than the FIGC would have seemed, a decade ago, like a category error. The transformation did not begin with Sinner. It began with a long-term strategic decision by FITP president Angelo Binaghi to reposition the Internazionali d'Italia in Rome as a world-class event rather than a mid-tier clay court tournament struggling to fill its own seats. At the start of the 2000s the Roman tournament was in decline. Today it has become an event capable of producing an economic impact estimated at €900 million over roughly two weeks, with more than 400,000 attendances and direct ticket revenues exceeding €35 million in 2025, up 22 percent on 2024. The Nitto ATP Finals in Turin, secured by the federation in 2021, produced an estimated total economic impact of €591 million in 2025, almost six times the first edition, generating nearly €100 million in tax revenues against a state contribution to the event of €13.7 million per year. Over 70 percent of the federation's total revenues now derives from hosting international competitions on Italian soil. Sinner's results then poured fuel on a fire that was already burning. Italian tennis players wrote pages of history in 2025, winning five Grand Slams among them. The federation now counts 1.2 million registered members, over 200 percent more than in 2020, 4,465 affiliated clubs, 2,553 tennis and padel schools, and around 15,000 coaches. Tennis is approaching football's participation figures, with 6.2 million players nationally against football's 6.5 million.  According to Nielsen research, racquet sports including padel, pickleball, squash and badminton now have around 20 million fans in Italy, more than volleyball, athletics, swimming and basketball combined.  The federation's decision to incorporate padel, renaming itself the Federazione Italiana Tennis e Padel in 2023, was strategically astute. Padel has grown faster in Italy than almost anywhere else in Europe, converting millions of recreational players who would never have picked up a tennis racquet into registered federation members and bringing with them club memberships, coaching fees, and court hire revenues that have transformed the federation's financial base from the ground up. The padel boom is not Sinner's doing. It is a separate and parallel revolution that the federation had the foresight to absorb rather than resist. The 2026 Internazionali BNL d'Italia, now in its 83rd edition, runs at the Foro Italico from 28 April to 17 May. This year sees the debut of the new SuperTennis Arena, designed to improve the spectator experience and add dynamism to the layout of the grounds. A tennis court is also being installed in Piazza del Popolo, where visitors can watch training sessions and exhibition matches free of charge.  That last detail is worth noting. The free court at Piazza del Popolo is a gesture toward accessibility at a tournament that has, in every other dimension, moved firmly upmarket. The combination of limited seating, global demand, and the star power of Sinner has pushed ticket prices into territory more commonly associated with major international events or luxury entertainment. What was once considered a relatively accessible sport to watch live is increasingly becoming a premium experience. For the federation, this is a success story. For the ordinary Italian fan who wants to see Sinner play in Rome, it presents a straightforward dilemma: follow the sport from home on SuperTennis, or pay a price that would have seemed extraordinary for a tennis ticket in Italy just five years ago. The FIGC's position is not simply that tennis has got better. It is that football has had a structural bad run at the federation level: no World Cup, no European Championship hosted in Italy, no major international event to drive revenue. For the FIGC, reaching the North American World Cup this summer is now essential to close the gap. The federation that missed three consecutive World Cups needs the tournament more than it might like to admit. Whether football recovers its primacy depends partly on results on the pitch, partly on Italy's World Cup fate, and partly on whether the structural growth of tennis and padel continues at its current rate. The smart money is on the latter. Italian tennis did not overtake Italian football because football got worse. It overtook it because someone built a better machine, found the right players at the right moment, and turned a sport that Italians once associated with country clubs and clay courts into a national obsession with a federation to match. The prices at the Foro Italico are the proof.