Sunday morning, as a preamble to the men’s final between Carlos Alcaraz and Alexander Zverev, Amélie Mauresmo, tournament director and Gilles Moretton, president of the FFT, took stock of the 2024 edition of the tournament. With a central question. Recurrent. Almost a running gag if it didn’t tarnish the image of the Parisian Grand Slam around the world.
But how can there be so many holes in the stands of the Philippe-Chatrier court when all the tickets have been sold? And above all why was the stadium half empty on Friday evening for the start of the second men’s semi-final between Zverev and Ruud?
“I’m starting to have perhaps more advanced ideas to avoid that,” says Mauresmo, who reserves his thoughts for the debrief of the organization which will take place in two weeks. There are also operational constraints, I am not going to give you miracle solutions today but we need to debate them. We are not satisfied with what we saw for the semi-finals. »
Same story, a bit fatalistic with Moretton. “I share the opinion of the disappointed fans who see this,” he breathes. We sold 670,000 tickets, but we cannot force people to return to the field. We cannot accept seeing empty stands like that in the second half, that was already the case last year. »
“A challenge that is not easy to resolve”
We are perfectly aware of the problem of dressing rooms and the many guests who prefer the fork to the racket. What is more surprising is that people who have paid for their place do not travel. And the argument of fans fed up by four hours of play between Alcaraz and Sinner in the first half does not hold up. In fact, there was one ticket office per match and only 10% of buyers had purchased tickets for both sessions…
“It’s still complicated to say that these people are not going to come,” breathes Mauresmo. I’m not in their heads. Afterwards, more generally, people no longer sit in their seats for 5, 6 or 7 hours like before. And there are also other attractive things within the Roland-Garros grounds. This is a challenge that is not easy to overcome. »
The tournament director also returned to the other debate of the total absence of women’s matches in night sessions this year. “I have always said it, a single match generates constraints in terms of playing time,” she says. We look at the posters and the playing time that we try to guarantee for evening spectators. Two years ago, we asked ourselves the question of moving to two matches in the evening but the Parisian culture is not to arrive at 7 p.m. in the stands and we would have other problems. »
