Bali’s 138-Pair FIP Promises Record Needs a Narrow Reading

The 2026 FIP Promises event in Bali recorded 138 pair entries across eight draws, according to the International Padel Federation’s pre-event announcement and post-event report. That was 25 pairs, or 22.1%, above the previous Asian FIP Promises record of 113 in Jakarta one month earlier. It is a tournament-entry record, not a count of 276 distinct junior players and not a measure of Asia’s total youth participation.

Select a metric to see what the Bali record establishes—and where the available data stop.

Bali Surpassed Jakarta By 25 Pair Entries

FIP announced the Bali figure on 13 August and confirmed it after the tournament on 17 August. The record applied to an Asian stage of the FIP Promises Tour, with boys’ and girls’ draws at under-12, under-14, under-16 and under-18 level.

Event	Pair entries	Draws	Entries per draw*
Bali, August 2026	138	8	17.25
Jakarta, previous record	113	7	16.14
Difference	+25	+1	+1.11

*Calculated from FIP’s totals; not a figure published by FIP.

The headline increase is calculated against Jakarta’s 113 entries: 25 divided by 113 equals approximately 22.1%. That comparison is accurate for the reported event totals. It says that Bali accepted or recorded more pair entries across its complete programme than the previous record holder did across seven draws.

The programme was not identical, however. Jakarta had seven draws, while Bali had all eight combinations generated by four age groups and two sex categories. One of Bali’s 25 additional entries therefore accompanied an additional draw that was absent from the previous record event.

Dividing each event total by its number of draws provides a limited adjustment. Bali averaged 17.25 entries per draw, compared with approximately 16.14 in Jakarta. The difference was approximately 1.11 entries per draw, an increase of about 6.9% rather than 22.1%.

That calculation does not replace the official record. FIP defined and reported the record using total pair entries, not average entries per draw. The adjusted figure is a descriptive check on how much of the higher total coincided with Bali offering one more draw.

It is not a controlled growth rate. Individual age and sex categories can attract different field sizes, and an average treats every draw as though it were comparable. FIP’s report did not provide a category-by-category Jakarta table that would allow each Bali draw to be matched with the equivalent Jakarta draw.

Two Boys’ Draws Supplied 44.9% Of Bali’s Entries

The 138 entries were not distributed evenly across the eight draws. FIP reported 33 pairs in the under-16 boys’ category and 29 in the under-14 boys’ category.

Bali category grouping	Pair entries	Share of total
Under-16 boys	33	23.9%
Under-14 boys	29	21.0%
Other six draws	76	55.1%
All eight draws	138	100%

The two named boys’ draws supplied 62 entries, or 44.9% of the entire tournament total. The remaining six boys’ and girls’ draws supplied 76 entries between them.

This concentration matters when the record is used as evidence of broad junior growth. The total shows that Bali assembled the largest Asian FIP Promises entry list reported by FIP at that point. It does not show that every category grew at the same pace, or that the increase over Jakarta was spread evenly across boys, girls and age groups.

A full category comparison would require Jakarta’s entries for the same under-12, under-14, under-16 and under-18 draws. That breakdown is not supplied in the cited FIP report. Without it, the data cannot establish which matched categories expanded, contracted or remained unchanged between the two events.

The 33-pair and 29-pair fields are still informative. They identify where a large portion of Bali’s entry volume sat. They should not be treated as representative field sizes for all eight categories or for other FIP Promises events.

Multiplying By Two Produces Player Places, Not Unique Players

Each pair contains two player positions, so 138 pair entries correspond to 276 player-draw places. The multiplication is straightforward, but the resulting unit is often mislabelled. It is not a verified count of 276 different people.

FIP’s results demonstrate why deduplication is necessary. Indonesia’s Ratu Athena Putri won the under-16 girls’ title with Johanna Nesya Rosejaya and the under-18 title with Kadek Nandini Oktavia Nandin. Putri therefore occupied a player place in two separate pair entries.

The boys’ results contain another overlap. Tursynkhan Arnur and Islam Duissengazin appeared in the under-18 boys’ final and also won the under-16 title. Each player was represented in more than one age draw, and the same partnership accounted for entries in both categories.

Those examples prove that at least some names occur more than once in the draw records. They do not reveal the complete amount of duplication. Determining the unique-athlete total would require a list of every entrant, standardized player identities and a process for counting each person once across all eight draws.

The post-event report confirms the 138-pair total but does not publish that deduplicated count. The number of unique competitors is consequently below 276, but the available report does not show by how much. Subtracting only the overlaps mentioned in the report would not solve the problem because other multi-draw entrants may also be present.

The distinction affects comparisons with participation statistics. A pair-entry total measures demand for places in tournament draws. A unique-player count measures people. Those are different quantities even when both are derived from the same event.

Entries Are Not The Same As Attendance Or Matches Played

“Entries” should retain its tournament meaning. The figure records pair places entered across the draws. Without a separate attendance, withdrawal or match-participation record, it should not be relabelled as the number of athletes who arrived in Bali or took the court.

This limitation is separate from deduplication. Even a complete entrant list would initially show who was entered, not necessarily who attended. Conversely, an attendance list could count each person once but would not preserve the number of draws in which that player appeared.

The cited reports provide the official pair-entry total and the tournament results highlighted by FIP. They do not provide a reconciled dataset covering entries, withdrawals, appearances and unique athletes. The record therefore belongs to the entry stage of the event measurement chain.

Wording such as “138 pairs competed” follows FIP’s post-event description, but it should not be converted into a precise claim about 276 attendees without supporting records. For analytical use, “138 pair entries across eight draws” is the least ambiguous formulation because it names both the unit and the scope.

The Record Supports An Event-Level Claim

The strongest conclusion available from the reports is specific: Bali staged the largest Asian FIP Promises Tour event recorded by FIP by pair entries as of August 2026. It surpassed the previous record quickly, included all eight listed age-and-sex draws and attracted competitors from Indonesia and several countries in Europe, Africa and Asia.

That conclusion contains four boundaries that should remain attached to the number:

• Event series: the claim concerns the FIP Promises Tour rather than all junior padel tournaments.
• Geography: FIP described it as a record for an Asian tour event, not a worldwide FIP Promises record.
• Measurement: the ranking uses pair entries, not unique players, attendance or completed matches.
• Time: it reflects FIP’s record statement in August 2026 rather than a permanent benchmark.

Removing any of those qualifiers makes the claim broader than the source. “Asian junior padel participation reached a record” would imply a population measure covering the continent. The reports instead document one tournament’s entries within a particular FIP series.

The record does not establish the number of junior padel players in Indonesia or Asia. Tournament entrants are a selected group, and some travelled from outside the host country. No population denominator is supplied, so the 138 entries cannot be converted into a participation rate.

It also does not establish growth in unique athletes between Jakarta and Bali. The two totals count pair entries, while repeat participation across age draws can differ from one event to another. A higher pair total can coexist with a smaller increase in distinct people.

Nor does the record measure retention or regular participation. A single entry shows involvement in that event, not whether the player trained regularly, had entered before or returned later. Those questions require player-level records over time.

Finally, the figure cannot rank Bali against FIP Promises tournaments outside Asia. The cited announcement calls it an Asian record and supplies Jakarta as the previous Asian benchmark. It does not provide the worldwide event table needed for a global comparison.

The 22.1% Increase Is Not A Continental Growth Rate

The percentage increase has a precise numerator and denominator: Bali’s 138 pair entries compared with Jakarta’s 113. It is valid as a change between those two reported event totals.

Calling it a 22.1% increase in Asian youth padel would change the denominator without evidence. A continental growth rate would require comparable counts of the relevant youth-player population at two points in time. Neither the total number of junior players in Asia nor a prior population count appears in the reports.

Even describing 22.1% as tournament growth needs the event scope attached. Bali and Jakarta were separate stages, held in different locations, and their programmes contained different numbers of draws. The percentage describes the increase from one event total to the next record total; it is not a same-event year-over-year measure.

The entries-per-draw comparison moderates the apparent change but cannot isolate a causal effect. It does not control for category mix, host-market demand, travel patterns or field limits. No such variables are quantified in the available reports. Its purpose is narrower: to show that the total-entry increase was partly accompanied by an increase from seven to eight draws.

A stronger growth assessment would need a longer sequence of FIP Promises events reported under consistent definitions. Category-level entries would permit like-for-like draw comparisons, while deduplicated player identifiers would separate additional entries from additional people. The Bali reports do not supply that series, so no broader growth figure can be calculated from them alone.

The Defensible Figure Is 138 Pair Entries Across Eight Draws

For headlines, databases and charts, the record should be entered as 138 pair entries, with Bali, the Asian FIP Promises Tour and August 2026 attached. The previous benchmark was 113 pair entries across seven draws in Jakarta, making the raw difference 25 pairs and the reported-total increase 22.1%.

If the comparison needs programme context, the calculated averages are 17.25 entries per draw for Bali and approximately 16.14 for Jakarta. Their difference is approximately 1.11 entries per draw, or about 6.9%. Those figures should be labelled as calculations from FIP’s totals rather than official FIP metrics.

The number 276 can be used only as the count of player-draw places generated by 138 pairs. It should not be presented as the number of distinct competitors. FIP’s results identify players entered in multiple draws, and the source does not publish the deduplicated total.

The broader proposition that youth padel is expanding across Asia may be consistent with Bali replacing a month-old Jakarta record. Quantifying that expansion requires more than two event totals: comparable tournaments over time, category-level fields and unique-player data. The record itself remains narrower and clear—Bali logged 138 pair entries across eight FIP Promises draws.