Women’s tennis matches are not as “attractive” as men’s, said Amelie Mauremos, a former tennis player and new director of the French tournament Roland-Garros. So much so that, in this championship, the tennis matches between women have been scheduled for 11:00 a.m., a time with less relevant audiences.
The statement was made after the discussion about the night schedules for the tennis matches of the French tournament. Introduced in 2021, they start at 9pm and, although they allow the public to watch the matches outside of working hours, they can also prevent spectators from going home if the match is long.
This is how it happened on Tuesday, May 31, in the dispute for the semifinals between Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic: it lasted four hours and twelve minutes, ended at 01:15 (local time), which caused some fans, who needed to take the metro, to leave the Philippe Chatrier field before the end of the match.
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This was the ninth men’s tennis match to be held at night. At stake are, among other reasons, the audiences. In France, the exclusive broadcasting rights were granted to Amazon, through the Prime Video platform, for 15 million euros. The French public channel France Television will have paid 10 million.
The controversy around the schedules brought to light the schedules of the women’s games of the French tournament, showing that the athletes are being harmed by the programming at times with few spectators.
According to Reuters, of the 20 women’s games scheduled in the French Grand Slam championship, 18 took place at 11:00. In addition to the audiences, the director, who was once the number one player in the world, also justifies single tickets being sold for the respective tennis matches.
“This is what we wanted to show to viewers who had tickets for only one game, because some of them do,” he said, quoted by Reuters. “It was more difficult, of course, to have a night game with only female players.”
In other tennis tournaments it is different. Wimbledon is the only one in Grand Sam that doesn’t include games that start overnight. The Australian and US Opens feature women’s tennis in the evening.
Source: Observadora
