At the extravagant multi-million pound WTA Finals, Iga Swiatek began her title defense at the King Saud University Sports Arena in front of a limited number of fans.
The former world No.1 was playing her first match since losing in the quarter-finals of the US Open after taking a brief break. During her hiatus, she changed coaches and is now working with Wim Fissette who is the first non-Polish coach in her career. Swiatek’s opponent on Sunday was reigning Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova who she ousted 4-6, 7-5, 6-2, in a roller-coaster encounter.
Throughout the two-and-a-half encounter, it was estimated by one reporter in attendance that the number of fans watching was a couple hundred. Even though the venue can hold between 2500 and 3000 people.
“Obviously,” Swiatek replied when asked if she would have liked a bigger crowd.
“But I think it was also comfortable for me because it was my first match after a break, so the fact it wasn’t super crazy also made it easier kind of for me.
“I think there’s gonna be more crowd (over the week). I guess today is the first working day because they have their weekend on Friday and Saturday, so we’ll see how it’s going to go in the next days.”
The sparse crowd was also noticed by Krejcikova, who declined to answer a question about a possible back issue after her latest match.
“I think it was nice. I mean, there weren’t that many fans, but I think they made a nice atmosphere, and they were rooting for both of us, and it was nice.” She said.
Coco Gauff’s All-American clash against Jessica Pegula also attracted similar numbers. She won their match 6-3, 6-2.
This year is the first time the WTA Finals are being staged in Saudi Arabia which had never previously hosted a WTA event of any sort. Although they have staged multiple exhibition tournaments, as well as the ATP Next Gen Finals. Inrecent years the country has been hoping to stage more tennis events with the goal of trying to inspire more people to take up the sport. Rafael Nadal is currently an ambassador for the Saudi Tennis Federation.
One of the journalists covering the WTA Finals live from the venue is Ubitennis’ Vanni Gibertini who has reported from tennis tournaments around the world. When it comes to the crowd numbers, he looks at the bigger picture.
“Culturally it doesn’t really register. I don’t think you can expect huge crowds here,” Gibertini tells Ubitennis.
“The players did quite a bit of outreach – there are 60,000 girls playing tennis in Saudi now. Which is a huge number considering that just a few years ago they couldn’t do anything.”
According to Human Rights Watch, there have been cases of women and girls in Saudi Arabia being banned from taking part in sports or watching sports in stadiums as recently as 2018. There have been reforms introduced to make the country more open to all but there are still concerns about sportswashing. The practice of using sport to improve a country’s reputation that has been tarnished by wrongdoing.
It isn’t all doom and gloom when it comes to the WTA Finals attendance. The venue was roughly three-quarters full for Saturday’s clash between Qinwen Zheng and Aryna Sabalenka, according to Gibertini.
“It was a young crowd, children and adolescents,” he said.
There may be concerns about the attendance figures but the same can’t be said about the money on offer. This year’s WTA Finals singles champion will win $4.45M in prize money and they could earn as much as $5.155M if they claim the title without losing a match.
