Embarrassingly small crowds in Shanghai
 

I understand that tournaments in China don't draw big crowds, but my god even when there are Chinese players playing there's like 3 people in the audience.

They have garish music, fog machines, spotlights, etc. to introduce the players... and then when the lights come on all you can see are seats.

So my question is: why did Rolex decide to sponsor this silly tournament? I know that Rolex is targeting Asian countries these days, especially China, but this seems like nothing but a big hole to throw Rolex's money down. :confused:

Television is what counts for sponsors, but its not good for tv audiences to have empty stadia.

It does show that there's no real live audience for tennis at either the prices or times that prevail in China.

Beijing is a lot better (relatively speaking) - http://tenniseastcoast.files.wordpre...ing-open-1.jpg
Shanghai is beyond a joke, especially for a masters tournament.
China is quite good at doing 'empty' - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19049254

Watch the show courts fill up as the round progresses. The Chinese crowd isn't that much interested in 1st round matches. They wanna see stars, not scrubs. They will show up in the coming days.

Last week in Beijing even the women's matches were well attended at the later stages (that was NOT the case at even Wimbledon centre court:

If crowds are low for early matches then massive price reductions may be useful, but you wonder whether the authorities actually care about either making money or entertaining crowds.

Too much money chasing too few investment opportunities.

All backed up by authorities pushing money on favoured insiders.

Time for a little socialism in China by allowing the badly housed to occupy empty apartments.

yes, attendance is pretty pathetic for a Masters event. I think the main reason is;even though Shanghai is one of the biggest cities in the world, majority of the people are poor. Attending tennis events in China could be considered an indulgence. Tennis , i think there, is a still a rich man's sport to play, watch and attend

Beijing actually looked really good this year. I was pleasantly surprised. djoko's matches were pretty much full.

Shanghai is behind, not sure why but I think once you get past first few rounds it should get better. It will still take some time till Chinese people warm up to tennis. I'm hoping that we'll be able to meet more Asian tennis players in general, but it seems to be so hard for them to break through. Such a huge country should be producing good players left and right. Freaking Serbia is producing #1, top 10 players on both the ATP and the WTA side, and they have like what 8,5 millions people there. I was disappointed with Shanghai tournament attendance last couple of years. I wish some of our tennis friends from China can give us some input. Are tickets too expensive?

Again, I prefer Beijing and think that organizers there did really a wonderful job there last few years.

Finals attendence is good at least (2010) - http://imgur.com/a/LODYS#0

Keep in mind that both Shanghai and Beijing’s stadiums have the joint fourth largest capacities in the world (both at 15,000, same as Wimbledon centre court) so you could excuse them for not being totally packed.
If they can afford finals tickets, they should be able to afford earlier rounds so it might be something else keeping them away.

Always a joke, has to be the worst attended Masters, they should play somewhere that fans will actually attend.

This is after an 8-day 'golden week' holiday. Nobody is going to take time off from work and watch live tennis. As always, come SF/final time, especially when Fed is playing, the stadium will be PACKED.

They are all paid to stand outside Japanese shops and factories.

Yeah that explains why the stadium is packed every year in the final - because final tickets are the cheapest.

Tennis simply isn't popular compared to basketball or badminton.
It's just like making Americans watch a cricket test match or Europeans watch American football.

Same goes for those Greenpeace folks

Yes, they shanghaied the crowds from the tennis stadium.

now my answer to OP if i was political correctness wacko like TROUBLEMAKER or Fart Le Bi would be : Now that is severely Racist, calling the chinese small....

yes, you're just plain wacko.

I looked up the word 'shanghai', by the way, and discovered that the practice of 'crimping' or 'pressganging' civilians into the merchant marine was standard practice in America for over one hundred years.

And of course once aboard a ship the law penalized desertion harshly.

Crickets! Crickets everywhere!