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Wimbledon 2022 is seeing considerably lesser crowds as compared to the 2019 edition (the edition in the pre-pandemic era). A few reports have claimed that it has gone down by seven percent as compared to 2019 and is the second-lowest since 2007. Many reasons have been associated with the lower footfall in 2022.
Through the first six days of the main-draw competition at the All England Club, the official attendance was listed as 237,927. That is a decrease of 7% from the Week 1 total at the last pre-pandemic edition of the tournament in 2019, which was 256,808. Not taking into account the attendance of last year and the year before (when the tournament was entirely canceled), this is the second-lowest attendance since 2007 (when it was 221,521).
Things did not kick off as anticipated from the first day itself with an announced attendance of only 36,603 — down 14% from the 42,517 on Day 1 in 2019, and the lowest since 2007. Reports claimed that technical issues impacted re-sales as the original Centre Court ticket holders decided to leave the grounds.
What is the reason behind such low attendance?
There are many reasons associated with this drastic fall in the number of spectators with tickets for the 2022 edition hard to come by being one of them. In previous years, punters waited anxiously to discover if they had managed to get their hands on a ticket after throwing their names into the mix in a public ballot.
This year, however, there was no ballot as those who had secured tickets for the canceled 2020 championships were offered seats for the same day and court this year. Also, the technical glitch in the first two days the tournament added to the misery as it impacted re-sales. The glitch led to long queues at the re-sale hubs, and empty seats inside the arena.
Although there was no comment made from the officials, Wimbledon Chief Executive expects massive attendance on Sunday. “First year of permanent middle Sunday, so we are expecting a record crowd because of that. We’ve got that additional capacity for that day,” said Sally Bolton.