"Another day of spreading misinformation" - Tennis fans criticize Rennae Stubbs for putting out inaccurate Australian Open 2023 viewership numbers

When the 2023 Australian Open viewership numbers were released at the start of February, former tennis player Rennae Stubbs was quick to bring up a statistic that said the women's singles final garnered more viewers than the men's singles final.

Stubbs, however, was later condemned by tennis fans for spreading misinformation. She took to social media on Thursday (February 2) to share a post that stated that the final match between Aryna Sabalenka and Elena Rybakina had amassed about 130,000 more viewers than Novak Djokovic's title clash with Stefanos Tsitsipas.

Stubbs used this as an example to state that women's sports are worth sponsoring.

"Don’t tell me Women’s sports isn’t worth sponsoring or showing on TV!," she tweeted.

However, it was later confirmed that the information was wrong as the numbers were inaccurate. As per official reports from the Australian Open media release, the men's final drew a maximum of 2.311 million viewers with an average of 1.747 million, whereas the women's final only peaked at 1.437 million viewers with an average audience of 1.036 million.

Fans were left annoyed with Stubbs for spreading misinformation through social media. One fan felt that it was suggested that she was not new to spreading misinformation.

"Just another day of Rennae spreading misinformation. Embarrasing," a fan said.

Journalist Stuart Fraser shared the official viewership figures and pointed out the contradiction in the numbers from Stubbs' post. He, therefore, urged the Australian to delete her post to prevent the further spread of misinformation.

"Hi Rennae. As I thought earlier, the ratings in that graphic you tweeted earlier are indeed misleading (correct numbers below courtesy of Tennis Australia). You may wish to issue a clarification or even delete given the amount of shares that piece of misinformation is getting?," he tweeted.

Another user indicated that such numbers and pictures could be made up by anyone as they asked Stubbs for relevant sources backing her information, saying:

"Anyone could’ve done that photo and made up some numbers to go with it. Where is there source"

Here are a few other fan reactions:

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Australian Open 2023 garners highest attendance record for any Grand Slam tournament

Novak Djokovic with the trophy at the 2023 Australian Open

The 2023 Australian Open recorded the highest-ever attendance in any Grand Slam tournament so far. More than 900,000 tennis fans attended various matches over two weeks at Melbourne Park.

This year's Asia-Pacific Major broke its 2020 record of 812,174 spectators. Around 63,120 fans were recorded attending the qualifier matches of the tournament and the numbers for the final rose to 902,312.