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The British grass season had a shake-up ahead of Wimbledon this year, with the WTA Tour returning to Queen's for the first time in 52 years. The west London club has played host to a long-standing ATP 500 event, but the women joined them for their own tournament in the first week of the grass season.

And Express Sport can exclusively reveal that both the men's and women's events at the HSBC Championships were a huge success with fans on the grounds and at home. BBC audiences rose by over 50 per cent during the two weeks, while the new women's week quickly became one of the most popular standalone WTA tournaments.

Across the two weeks at Queen's, an average of 651,000 viewers tuned in on the BBC - up 51 per cent on last year's two-week span, when there was an ATP 500 and Queen's and a WTA 500 at Eastbourne.

The tournaments had an 11.7 per cent share of the TV audience and over 7.5 million online viewing requests.

Viewers peaked for the men's final, with 1.71 million fans watching Carlos Alcaraz beat Jiri Lehecka to win his second Queen's Club title - a rise of 64 per cent on the 2024 peak.

More than 130,000 fans attended Queen's in the two weeks. In the first year of the women's event, 62,000 flocked to the West Kensington club. The final three days sold out entirely as spectators packed out the new Andy Murray Arena to watch qualifier Tatjana Maria lift the trophy, while there was an 88 per cent aggregate audience for the whole week.

This makes the WTA 500 at Queen's one of the highest-attended standalone women's tour events on the calendar, just behind Charleston and the Canadian Open.

The men's ATP 500 tournament was once again a sell-out across the week, with 71,000 spectators turning up.

And the HSBC Championships Instagram account enjoyed 4.1m interactions during the fortnight.

Chris Pollard, the's LTA Managing Director, Commercial and Operations, said: "We're delighted that the new women's event at the HSBC Championships has driven such impressive audience figures.

"When we decided to change the grass court season calendar, our objectives were to grow interest in tennis, and particularly women's tennis, earlier in the summer.

"These figures show that has been delivered with big uplifts in both TV audience and online engagement across the event compared to 2024.

"The men's event has also continued to grow its popularity and ranks as the largest tennis event outside of Wimbledon in this country. With 10 of the 14 days across the fortnight selling out completely, we are proud to see the popularity of both the HSBC Championships and tennis surging."

The successful turnout in person and online comes after the LTA pledged to boost the prize money on offer at WTA events in Queen's and Eastbourne, with the goal of achieving equal pay by 2029.

A record prize purse of £1m ($1.415m) was on offer at the Queen's Club, making it the highest-paying WTA 500 tournament of its draw size this year. A total of £287k ($389k) was up for grabs in Eastbourne, with Aussie Maya Joint winning the title.

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