HDC I-Park Mall announced on the 29th that its rooftop racquet sports venue "M-move Padel Lounge," which made its domestic debut, has surpassed 20,000 cumulative visitors in just one year.
Padel is a sport that combines tennis and squash, using the Spanish language. It is played in doubles on a court surrounded by glass walls, utilizing the walls actively to create long rallies and engage in strategic gameplay within a narrower court than tennis.
Although it is unfamiliar in Korea, padel has gained explosive popularity in Europe and was adopted as an official sport in the 2013 European Games. The first venue in Korea was opened last year in the rooftop space of I-Park Mall. The I-Park Mall team noted that padel has started to gain attention as a new sport for the MZ generation, with customer age groups expanding from 7 years old to over 65 in the last six months, leading to its popularization. Furthermore, it was reported that group experiential learning for middle and high school students and team workshops for corporations are being conducted more than 10 times a month on average. I-Park Mall plans to continue developing various programs so that customers of all ages can enjoy and interact through padel.
Choi Yong-hwa, head of sales at HDC I-Park Mall, said, "I-Park Mall aims to become a fun space for daily life by filling various areas within the shopping mall with differentiated content," adding, "The new space on the third floor of the Living Park, set to be renovated, will also be filled with joy and showcased soon."