BBC receives record peak audience during Wimbledon Women’s Quarter-Final
BBC television has released some astounding figures concerning the Wimbledon women’s quarterfinal that took place on 11 July. The clash between Britain's Johanna Konta and Romanian Simona Halep has notched up a record 7.4 million audience views, one million more than the men’s final.
While the stats are definitely staggering, it would be wrong to brand it as surprising. The face-off between the two had gained a huge hype owing to Konta’s nightmarish experience during her Fed Cup clash with Simona Halep last April. The 26-year-old was reduced to tears on the court by what she felt as threats and intimidation by the Romanian fans sitting in the audience.
England fans saw it as a perfect chance for payback and they did well on their part. The match ended quite controversially when the Romanian swiped the ball into the net following a loud scream by a woman from the Centre Court crowd, which Halep claimed as a distraction.
Speaking after the game, the 25-year-old said, “I was surprised that that lady was screaming. I thought he's going to repeat the point. I think it's normal to repeat the point when someone is screaming like that. He said, ‘we cannot
Though it mars the hard-fought 6-7(2) 7-6(5) 6-4 victory that Konta had over her opponent, it didn’t stop her from becoming the first British woman to reach the last four of the tournament since 1978. Although she crashed out in the semi-final against tournament runner-up Venus Williams, she managed to hit the most aces among women (35) in the tournament.
The three-week long historic tournament is much more than the end result, and the figures released by the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (AELTC) justifies it. And what better statistics to prove it than this - 166,055 portions of strawberries were sold in the 20 days, along with 110,225 traditional English scones, and
Around 46,408 baseball caps, 30,386 towels, 8,882 umbrellas and 1,334 Panama hats were sold at the Wimbledon shop. And as for the players, they had feasted on 2,195kg of bananas.
