The organizers of Roland Garros dreamed of receiving up to 20,000 spectators a day, despite the limitations due to the coronavirus pandemic, but that scenario seems increasingly unlikely after the veto imposed by the French Prime Minister to events with more than 5,000 people. In the first place, a cancellation of the Parisian Grand Slam was feared because of the pandemic. Then the tournament was postponed. The possibility of having a place at an empty door was considered, and for the moment the idea is that there is an audience. But how much?

The question is not minor since the French Tennis Federation (FFT) lives on the income that its star tournament brings: 255.4 million euros out of a total budget of 325 million euros in 2019. Of this sum, the cash (519,901 viewers over the two weeks) accounted for 18%.

On July 2, coinciding with the relaunch of the Roland Garros ticket sales after the cancellation of the first sale and the refund of all the tickets, the FFT assured that the Porte d'Auteuil venue would host up to 20,000 people a day on all its tracks for the 2020 edition, rescheduled from September 27 to October 11, which is "between 50 and 60% of its usual capacity".

Thus, 10,000 seats were put up for sale for each of the finals. Since then, officially, the FFT has persisted in maintaining that figure, evoking the sanitary measures taken to protect the people who attend (players, spectators, press, staff).

But French Prime Minister Jean Castex called into question that capacity ceiling on August 26 by announcing that "it will no longer be possible for the prefectural authority to repeal" the maximum limit of 5,000 people "in the red departments", especially Île- de-France, the Paris region.

Pulse

And according to a source close to the dossier, the prefect of the Paris police Didier Lallement has the firm intention of applying the government slogan to the letter. Result for Roland Garros: not being able to receive more than 5,000 spectators per day and a new refund of the tickets sold, restart of the process, loss of time and money.

But beyond the capacity, technical questions about the flow of spectators in the venue and the evacuation routes are evoked to justify the rethinking of what the FFT and the authorities had decided a few months ago, when the context was different. "Clearly, the trend is not good, a source close to the case told AFP on Friday. The fear is also creating a precedent and that others will take advantage of it."

The "worried" tennis players

One of the options being considered, evoked by the French Minister of Sports R oxana Maracineanu , would be to divide the Roland-Garros complex so that each of the great tracks (Philippe-Chatrier, Suzanne-Lenglen and Simonne-Mathieu) is fully independent and thus be able to occupy several zones with 5,000 spectators each. "When the time comes, details will be given," FFT CEO Jean-François Vilotte told AFP.

Across the Atlantic in New York, the United States Federation (USTA) hosts the US Open behind closed doors, and in drastic sanitary conditions, with players beginning to ask questions about their safety at Roland Garros. "It is very rigorous, very strict, but at the same time it is reassuring. When you are in the bubble there is no risk of contagion," French tennis player Nicolas Mahut confessed to Eurosport, just a month before the start of the Paris tournament.

But, "we have no news of the protocol that will be implemented at Roland-Garros and the players are beginning to be quite concerned. Many say that they would like the conditions to be the same at Roland Garros (as in Flushing Meadows) and, honestly, not I know how it would be possible to do the same in Paris, how to create a bubble around the players by authorizing the public, "added the world number three in doubles.

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