Record breaking Indian Wells is an $850m beast

Indian Wells proves once again how important major tennis events are to the local area they are located

According to figures sent to Racket Business Indian Wells organisers “a total of 493,440 fans attended the tournament over the two-week period earlier this year – a new event record. An impressive 94 percent of all unique spectators traveled from outside the region equating to 145,860 out-of-town visitors.”

The most amazing stat is that “on average each person attended the tournament 3.18 days” proving that this really is a destination for more than just watching professional tennis.

Obviously it helps that Indian Wells has both a WTA and ATP 1000 event during it’s 2 week calendar slot and the weather and location all enable fans to reap the full benefits of the site.

In turn this lead to a huge $ amount that can be directly and indirectly attributed to the tournament itself. “Total gross economic impact is derived by calculating the direct ($568,988,608) and indirect and induced ($247,822,499) economic impacts and then adding them together to show the incremental spending above and beyond what would have been expected had the BNP Paribas Open not been held in the area. Direct spending includes money spent by out-of-town visitors, vendors, sponsors, and the tournament organization to a business in the region. Indirect and induced impact is the re-spending of this money by the regional businesses in the regional economy.”

Racket Business would love to see similar figures for other events that have less focus on creating an ‘experience’ for their fans. Would any other ATP Masters 1000 events manage to persuade fans to visit for 3 days each?