Fed Cup in Moscow: attendance, location...

So, Kim Clijsters didn't play because of the expected poor attendance resulting in the choice of Moscow due to a few more $$$. Was it that bad?

Day 1 & 2: Belgium vs. USA: no big names, and an abysmal attendance: a maximum of 100 persons were there, if you count the officials and both teams...

Fed Cup final: France vs. USA: there were maybe up to a thousand persons (which I doubt), but disseminated in a place with 12,000 seats, they looked more like 100-200...


So, has the choice for Moscow been the right one?

In terms of attendance, certainly not. Even with the same SF results, in Brussels the final would certainly have been sold-out, with the popularity of tennis in Belgium, and the proximity of France!

In terms of top players being there, it was not the right choice either: the top 2 players in the world would have played, had this event been played in Belgium.


So, what do you think? Did the ITF make a big mistake in chosing Moscow as the Fed Cup host?

Yes they did.They shouldn't choose quantity over quality.And I don't say this just cause I'm a Belgian I would also have appreciated if it was played in France.I mean it's not like Fed Cup is the biggest event at this point,so the ITF should have done everything to try and make it more popular.That starts by choosing the right location,changing the dates and listen to the players and coaches what they have too say cause at the end of the day they are the most important persons.If they chose Belgium(or France)they would be guaranteed a full-packed audience,a great athmosphere and atleast one of the two topplayers of the world.If they had never organised a big tennisevent in Belgium,OK I would understand it .But I think Bob Verbeeck(the organisator of the Proximus Diamond Games and all of the Fed Cup meetings in Belgium) proved us how succesfull and professional these events are in Belgium.

Thankfully, the French supporters that were there, did make a lot of noise, to try to create an atmosphere. Otherwise it would have been really bad! I notice one girl even brought her own drum.

The problem is partly, that the Moscow venue is such a big arena, that it's going to almost always seem empty. I'm sure it would have got a big crowd in either Belgium (as Kim & Justine would probably have played) or France. Not quite so sure if it would in the USA, simply because they were missing so many of their big names.

Yeah fortunately the French supporters tried to create an atmosphere, and they were quite numerous...

A Belgium-France match-up in either France or Belgium would have been really big! I remember those France-Belgium a few years ago, there was always a great atmosphere in a sold-out place, and our top players weren't even in the top 10!

when we played France there was about 9-10000 in there and some parts were still empty, that was due to some areas been cut off (no tickets were sold) it holds 20000 in all.

French brought some fans with them.
where were the Belgians ?? (of course why would they wanna watch Els and Elke) if they weren't gonna be interested in their own team, nor were we.


i can understand why there weren't many Americans there

Still, it's a shame there were so few people for the Fed Cup final! It looks like the people who go there only go to cheer their girls... Maybe if instead of tennis they had played the darts world championships with a Russian in the final there would have been as many people as for France-Russia...