3 reasons for low crowd attendance at Wimbledon 2022

During the centenary year of Wimbledon's Centre Court, it was expected that the stadiums would be filled to capacity right from the first round. But in the first week of Wimbledon 2022, when British stars Emma Raducanu and Andy Murray were playing on the same day, seeing so many empty seats was baffling. Attendance on the first day was only 36,303, which was the lowest since 2007. Even during Nadal’s opening match, the Royal Box was almost empty with star guests Bear Grylls and Mike Tindall hardly seen.

In the first four days of The Championships, attendance was 11% down compared to 2019. This was surprising to many, especially since COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted this year. Here are three reasons why there have been more empty seats at Wimbledon this year compared to previous ones:

#1 Ticket holders wining and dining

Seats inside the Royal Box on Centre Court are usually reserved for corporate guests, which includes many perks such as free food and drinks. The disadvantage of allowing fans to wine and dine during the match is that they often leave their seats if they think that the match is not interesting enough.

Tennis fans carrying beers at Wimbledon

This leads to an artificial scenario of seats appearing empty when they are in fact occupied.

#2 Technical issue with re-sale of tickets

During the first two days of Wimbledon 2022, it was reported that there were some technical glitches which impacted the re-sale of tickets. Re-selling is done when the original ticket holder decides to sell their ticket due to personal reasons. While the organizers estimated a full house at SW19 this year, technical issues were responsible for the small amount of re-sale tickets being sold.

#3 Absence of Roger Federer, World No. 1 Daniil Medvedev and other top players

Many top tennis stars like eight-time champion Roger Federer, World No. 1 Daniil Medvedev and Naomi Osaka are not competing at SW19 this year. Last year's finalist, Matteo Berrettini, was also forced to leave the tournament before playing a match due to testing positive for COVID-19. The lack of star power at the grass-court Major has surely played a role in the low attendance numbers.

Organizers will have to take a good hard look at the causes for low attendance at the world's oldest Slam and ensure solutions are hastily found.