French Open posts record attendance despite empty seats

French Open tournament director Amelie Mauresmo has revealed that a record 630,000 fans attended this year’s edition of the grand slam event.

The figure, which includes the qualifying week preceding the two-week main draw, surpasses last year’s total of 613,000.

The record numbers were posted despite some of the latter-stage matches taking place with empty seats, with corporate boxes noticeably sparse.

Addressing the empty seats, French Tennis Federation (FFT) president Gilles Moretton said: “Some people like to walk around the alleys, too. And if a match is boring, and I’ve seen some and will not name and shame, you might want to go and see another match. There is room for improvement, it is true, but we also accept our differences.”

Discussing the qualifying week, Mauresmo said: “I’m very satisfied that this opening week, this qualification week, was an incredible success. The tickets were sold out for the week.

“We really made the qually players feel that they were part of Roland-Garros, that it was not a sub-tournament, that they were part of the 2023 edition of Roland-Garros. The players were very happy about that. We’ll even go further for 2024. We have possibilities for development for that week in 2024.”

Night sessions during the tournament were brought forward by an hour and commenced at 8.30pm local time, which Mauresmo felt “really improved the situation”. She acknowledged that organisers “can do better” on night matches, which only featured men for the second year running.

Mauresmo added: “The first thing we did for the general public was diminish the number of people in total, so minus 2,000 people, it’s minus 2,000 of the top stands of Simonne-Mathieu, and all the tickets had access to this part of the stands.

“This enabled us to have fewer people in the queues, greater comfort, a better experience for the general audience entering the stadium. It was appreciated by everyone. We have tools to measure that satisfaction, and the feedback is exceptional. It’s something we will keep for 2024, because feedback is super positive.

“Despite these minus 2,000 people per day, we have beaten the record of people in total for the visitors, with better comfort, a better distribution over the weeks.”

This year’s French Open concluded at the weekend, with Novak Djokovic and Iga Swiatek winning the singles titles.

Earlier this year, the Australian Open set a new record attendance for a grand slam tournament as 902,312 fans turned out across three weeks of competition.

The figure included the tournament itself and the qualifying events, which attracted 63,120 fans.