Roland-Garros director Amélie Mauresmo welcomed Sunday the record attendance recorded by the 2023 edition over three weeks (including qualifications), and spoke of the success of the night sessions despite the programming of a single match. feminine in ten evenings.
The tournament had decided to reduce the number of tickets sold per day by 2,000 this year, leaving ticket holders for the adjoining courts to have access to the upper stands of the Simonne-Mathieu court, the site’s third largest enclosure.
Qualifying success
“This does not prevent, despite these 2,000 fewer people per day, from having still broken the record over these three weeks, since we are at more than 630,000 people who entered the stadium, with more comfort important, better distributed over the weeks and in the stadium with access to Simonne-Mathieu which has been more democratized, “said Mauresmo.
The former player insisted on the success, from the point of view of attendance, of the qualifying week. “We also really made the qualifying players feel that they were part of the Roland-Garros tournament, that it was not a sub-tournament,” she noted. Another positive point, according to her, is the decision to advance the night session match to 8:30 p.m.
“It was definitely more consistent for the players, the public. We had zero transport problems after the matches as we had last year. It really made things better. Even for the partners, I had positive feedback, even if it was more the rush to fill the stadium. It was also well received and perceived. We will keep it for 2024, ”noted the tournament director.
“The will not to finish at 2 a.m.”
But the night session raised the same question as last year: why only one women’s game? “Apart from the night sessions, the best slots were balanced between men and women, it was very important for us”, retorted Mauresmo.
As for the nights themselves, she highlighted the difficulty of scheduling these matches given the multitude of parameters to take into account, including the fact that “some eligible players were not very inclined to play in the evening and had ‘other desiderata’.
Mauresmo, however, rejected the option of scheduling two matches, one men’s and one women’s, per night session, like at the US Open or the Australian Open. The will of the tournament is “not to finish at 2, 3 or 4 in the morning”, she said.