PScheduled at night, the quarter-final between Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic ended Wednesday at 1:16 a.m. and the two players regretted this late hour linked, they underlined, to the will of the broadcasters who “pay a lot of silver “. “It’s too late, no doubt,” said the winner, Nadal, who then had to comply with the exercise of the press conference. “I can’t complain because I have two days off (before the semi-final on Friday, editor’s note), but if I only had one, or if we take the case of Zverev in Madrid (who finished his semi-final at 1 hour past, went to bed at 5:20 a.m. and had to play the final 13 hours later), then it’s a big problem”, underlined the Spaniard.
“Obviously I understand the other side of the business, that the televisions pay a lot of money to have matches so late, and suddenly the tournament receives money and the players too”, he recognized by estimating however that there was a “balance” to be found. “Starting the matches here at 9 p.m., on clay, in the best of five sets, it can last a very long time,” he recalled.
“They give money, they decide”
“The night sessions start too late,” also lamented Djokovic. “But it’s the TVs that decide. This is the world we live in. The broadcasters decide that this match will be played at night, this one during the day. They give money, they decide,” he added.
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The night sessions appeared at Roland-Garros in 2021. They are broadcast exclusively by the paying platform Prime Video. But for the clash between Nadal and Djokovic, the platform has agreed to leave it open access, free, in France. France Télévisions, the historic public broadcaster of Roland-Garros, holds the rights to broadcast the matches played during the day (with the exception of those at the Simonne-Mathieu court).
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