At Indian Wells, tennis crowds, tickets and show courts form a complex equation

Welcome back to the Monday Tennis Briefing, where The Athletic will explain the stories behind the stories from the past week on court.

This week, the men’s and women’s tours descended on California’s Palm Desert for the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells.

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How to solve a problem like ticketing?

Scheduling a tennis tournament is much more complex than it first appears. Fans want to buy tickets to see stars and their favorite players. The stars and favorite players have preferences about courts and court times. Courts and court times are subject to television companies’ preferences about what the court times are in other countries. And while the tickets for the biggest stadiums are often bought in advance, the actual completion of this scheduling Tetris — apart from the first round — doesn’t happen until the day before the matches.

So it is everywhere, and so it is at the 2026 BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells. The days are yet to be so hot that player preferences around that become a factor, but the usual day or night, early or late carousel is in full swing. Fans of rising prodigies whose adulation outstrips their standing in the sport (more on them later) have packed into outside courts in their droves whenever they can. Matches that open each day’s play, especially in the biggest stadiums, start with mostly empty seats. That’s not on any given tournament — that’s mostly on the existence of lunch, sponsors, and sponsors’ lunches.

But Indian Wells has made one change that has not gone over all that well with tennis fans. In previous years, Stadium 2, the second-biggest court, was good for a grounds pass, which costs around $60 during the tournament, is cheaper before it, and used to get fans into Courts 2 to 9.

Now, a Stadium 2 ticket has the same parameters as a Stadium 1 ticket: A reserved seat, and access to unreserved seating in Courts 3 to 9 (some seats close to the action on Court 3 can be reserved with an individual ticket).

At the time of writing, a Stadium 2 ticket for the fourth-round day sessions starts at $75, and Stadium 3 tickets are much more expensive, around $170, because of their court proximity. But the pricing is not the point.

The knock-on effect of the new Stadium 2 policy, which the tournament declined to comment on, is that night-session matches on that court, which used to fill up with grounds-pass holders, have at times been close to empty. Elina Svitolina’s second-round win over Laura Siegemund was one such example. Even Stadium 1 ticketholders cannot access Stadium 2.

This crowd shot basically shows how bad a decision it was to no longer let groundpass holders onto Stadium 2.

This comes on a day where they’re expecting to break attendence records, outer courts have been packed and meanwhile S2 is empty, not fair on Svitolina/Siegemund either pic.twitter.com/4mPW7DjGmY

— Tennis Updates (@TennisUpdates26) March 8, 2026

This is not a question of sales — Stadium 2 has been sold out, or has just a handful of tickets remaining every day so far — but one of fans’ endurance. A seat-holder is unlikely to spend 12 hours in one stadium, but a grounds-pass holder, who has been milling between courts all day, might stick around for one last match.

The change has ultimately not deterred fans, with the tournament setting a single-day attendance record (almost 59,000 people) on its first Friday. The grounds are teeming and general admission courts are mostly full or even oversubscribed, as they have become at the Grand Slams and other biggest events in the sport the past couple of years, with tournaments embracing their own popularity and capitalizing on it as much as they can.

But it has led to discontent over how tournaments make these decisions, as complex as scheduling them can be.

— James Hansen

What next for the men’s tour’s bid to attract younger fans?

The ATP Tour will announce a renewed partnership with Gen-Alpha, Gen-Z and Millennial fan sports media company Overtime today (Monday), as it continues its push to attract a younger audience.

The original agreement, signed in February 2025, was followed by partnerships with Spotify and TikTok — the latter in particular is part of the same drive — and has led to 80 million views on videos across Instagram and TikTok.

More than half of the 80 million views have come from new fans, with 67 percent of viewers under 35. The offbeat questions have resonated on the platforms, but have also been criticized for their distance from tennis and its wider culture.

The most-viewed include Novak Djokovic being asked about the greatest athletes of all time, and Carlos Alcaraz naming his five favorite soccer players, both on Instagram.

 

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Whether tour-sanctioned content can ever truly take off in a social media landscape that prizes irreverence and disruption also remains in question.

Further initiatives are designed to showcase more of players’ personalities, which was part of the rationale for the ‘Athlete Arrivals’ launched at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., last week. Various ATP stars arrived at the tournament kitted out with clothes that reflect their “personal brand style,” according to the tour, as reported by Hard Court.

“By showcasing the human side of our athletes in authentic, innovative formats, we’re building stronger emotional connections and ensuring tennis continues to evolve for a new generation,” ATP Tour chief executive Eno Polo said.

— Charlie Eccleshare

The tennis fandom takeover comes to the desert

The biggest stage at Indian Wells hosted two of the biggest fandoms Sunday night, as Alex Eala and then João Fonseca took to Stadium 1.

Eala, of the Philippines, and Fonseca, from Brazil, have quickly become sporting avatars for their nations. Eala has been making tennis history for an archipelago of 7,641 islands and more than 110 million people since 11 months ago, when she stormed to the Miami Open semifinals. Since then, Eala, now 20, has broken record after record, while bringing legions of passionate and engaged fans to tournaments across the globe.

Fonseca, 19, has done the same with Brazilian fans, building on the presence of Beatriz Haddad Maia on the WTA Tour and the legendary Gustavo Kuerten, who won three French Open titles and reached world No. 1.

Eala and Fonseca each faced an American — Coco Gauff and Tommy Paul — and their presence on the main stadium at the tournament added further tension to the discussion around tickets, courts and popularity that has roiled tennis since their rise.

The basic quandary goes something like this. Eala and Fonseca’s popularity has outpaced their ranking and status in the game, even though both are rising stars and Fonseca, in particular, has the upside of a potential future major champion. Fans buy tickets for entire Grand Slam days just to watch their matches, which are usually on general admission courts at this stage of their careers.

Those courts get far too full, so some fans miss out on seeing the player they came to see. But when Eala and Fonseca do play on the biggest courts, which carry session-specific tickets and higher prices, and require booking further in advance, their fans sometimes find it harder to follow them.

Accordingly, Eala and Fonseca’s matches Sunday night did not have the raucousness of their early-round encounters at Grand Slams, or their second-round matches against Dayana Yastremska and Karen Khachanov, which were played on courts with general admission.

Still, a large Filipino contingent packed the upper bowl at one end of the stadium, and roared for Eala’s acknowledgement at the end of a 6-2, 2-0 win in which Gauff retired injured. Eala also had the edge on crowd support for most of the match.

When it was Fonseca’s turn, the vibes were similar. Brazilian flags fluttered all around the top of the stadium, chanting Fonseca’s name as he produced one of the most mature performances of his career. After he recovered a 2-0 deficit in the second set to lead 3-2, a Mexican wave rippled around the stadium like the desert wind does on breezier nights.

When it was over, Fonseca had a 6-2, 6-3 win, to the delight of his fans peering down from the upper reaches of the stadium, and his first appearance in an ATP Masters 1000 fourth round, when he faces Jannik Sinner.

“We play tennis to play against the biggest ones,” Fonseca said during his on-court interview. As he and Eala rise further, they will become some of the biggest ones on court, matching their presence off it.

— James Hansen

Another expansion for Italian men’s tennis?

Italy’s preeminence in men’s tennis is set to grow further with the acquisition of a new ATP Tour tournament.

According to a report in Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, the Italian Tennis and Padel Federation (FITP) has acquired the licence of the ATP 250 tournament currently held in Brussels. That event is played on indoor hard courts at the end of the year, but the FITP, according to the report, would move it to a slot in June during the three weeks of grass-court tournaments between the French Open and Wimbledon.

A source briefed on the terms of the transaction, speaking anonymously because they weren’t permitted to speak publicly, said the deal was close to being finalised. They added that Milan had not been confirmed as the Italian host city.

The ATP, whose chairman is Italian and whose end-of-year finals are hosted in Turin, and the FITP declined to comment on the story. Corriere della Sera reported that the license cost the Italian Federation $24 million, plus a 10 percent stake to the ATP.

The switch would make sense for the ATP, which is in the process of rejigging its 2028 calendar to accommodate a new Masters 1000 event, the rung below the Grand Slams, in Saudi Arabia.

The new tournament is expected to take place in February. When it was confirmed in October, ATP Tour chairman Andrea Gaudenzi suggested that one solution to the calendar reshuffle would be having two tournament swings in the month: one in west Asia and one in South America.

That would leave precious room for the European indoor events in Rotterdam and Montpellier in February. But they could be moved to October when the other European indoor events take place — Brussels being removed from the calendar would free up some space then.

— Charlie Eccleshare

📅 Coming up

🎾 ATP 

📍Indian Wells, Calif.: BNP Paribas Open (1,000) featuring Carlos Alcaraz, Novak Djokovic, Jannik Sinner, Jack Draper.

📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel 💻 Tennis TV

🎾 WTA

📍Indian Wells, Calif.: BNP Paribas Open (1,000) featuring Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Świątek, Elena Rybakina, Amanda Anisimova.

📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel

Tell us what you noticed this week in the comments below as the men’s and women’s tours continue.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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