COLUMN: Why are we allowing WTA 1000 matches playing to empty venues in prime time?

I’m watching a first-round match between Amanda Anisimova, currently ranked world No. 6, and former world No. 1 Karolina Pliskova.

Two elite players (okay, one currently and one formerly elite player) A night session. Prime time.

From multiple television angles, I counted 92 people in the stands. Maybe my math is off. Maybe it was 192. Maybe even 210. But it was 8:25 p.m. in Doha, this was a Women’s Tennis Association 1000-level event, and that’s precisely the point.

It shouldn’t even be a debate. WTA 1000 tournaments are supposed to represent the sport at its highest non-Grand Slam level. They are marketed as elite showcases, premium stops on the calendar, destinations for fans and sponsors alike. These are events that shape rankings, storylines, rivalries, and television narratives.

And yet here we were watching two world-class professionals hit in front of what looked like a private lesson gallery. This isn’t about shaming a host city. It’s about asking a necessary question the sport has danced around for too long.

What does a tournament actually have to earn to be a 1000? Because lately, it feels like the label has been handed out far more easily than the experience justifies.

We’ve created too many “fake-1000” events—tournaments that carry the weight of the designation without consistently delivering the atmosphere, visibility, attendance, or cultural pull that the tier implies.

I’ve written before that our own event in Montreal falls into that category as well. It is a proud tournament with history and loyal supporters, but prestige in modern tennis is no longer inherited. It has to be renewed every year through packed stands, buzz, and a sense that players are performing inside something bigger than the match itself.

A 1000-level badge should not be a courtesy title. It should be an earned credential. Right now, the pathway from 250 to 500 and from 500 to 1000 feels far too soft. There is no visible bar. No publicly articulated standard for attendance, ticket demand, broadcast reach, atmosphere, or local engagement. Imagine if tennis adopted the same rigor it applies to ranking points.

To be a 1000, a tournament should consistently prove it can draw crowds for weekday sessions, not just finals. It should demonstrate genuine local interest, not reliance on corporate seating blocks that remain empty on camera. It should move tickets without heavy discounting and create the sense that being there matters. It should be about more than just some sponsor throwing a little money behind getting an event to a city. Because optics matter.

Fans at home notice empty seats. Casual viewers notice. Sponsors notice. And players absolutely notice. Tennis is not a studio sport. It feeds off human presence. Energy. Noise. Tension between points. The murmur before a serve. The eruption after a break.

When those elements are missing, even the best tennis in the world flattens. WTA players in particular deserve better than to perform marquee-level matches inside what looks like a rehearsal hall. The tour has made real strides in recent years—larger prize pools, more visibility, better scheduling. But presentation is part of legitimacy, and legitimacy is part of growth.

You cannot sell a product as premium while showing rows of empty chairs. There is also a scheduling issue buried in all of this. First rounds at major events are notoriously overloaded with matches, but if you insist on placing top players into night sessions, then the environment must justify the spotlight. Otherwise, you are diluting the very currency that the night match is supposed to carry.

Not every city needs to host a 1000. That’s not an insult. It’s just reality. Different markets excel at different scales. Some are perfect for intimate 500-level events. Others thrive as developmental stops. And a very select few Indian Wells, Rome, and sometimes Madrid—have built something that unmistakably feels massive.

Those tournaments didn’t become iconic because the tour told us they were. They did it because the crowds, the grounds, and the energy made it obvious. Doha, on this evidence, is not there yet. And that’s okay—if the tour is willing to be honest about what that means.

What isn’t okay is continuing to inflate categories without holding tournaments accountable to them. Tennis has spent decades trying to expand its footprint, attract new fans, and compete in an increasingly crowded sports-entertainment market. The fastest way to undermine that effort is to broadcast emptiness under the banner of prestige.

If the WTA wants its top tier to mean something, it needs to define what that something is. Attendance thresholds. Marketing commitments. Local outreach. Broadcast presentation standards.

Make the criteria public. Make promotion between tiers conditional. Make hosting a 1000 an achievement rather than an entitlement. Because when the world No. 6 and a former No. 1 walk onto court in prime time, the question should never be how many people bothered to show up. It should be how loud the building is going to get. Right now, too often, the silence is doing the talking.