Serena Williams charged $100 to watch some tennis

[SoundfSilence]

Knowing her popularity, the organisers of the Farmers Classic ATP tournament in Los Angeles must have thought they were on to a winner when they got the top women's player to do a promotional photoshoot for the men's tournament with fellow American James Blake.
However, when Serena then later asked for tickets to see the likes of Andy Murray in action, she was shocked when the organisers asked her to stump up $100 for each ticket.

So what do modern, internet savvy people do when somebody or something irks them? They tweet of course - and Serena told her legions of followers to boycott the event in LA after the PR own-goal from the organisers.

You can see her tweets in full in the picture below, but for those who are not fluent in text speak the basic translation is this (we think):

"Oh my god, the Farmers Classic tournament in LA is charging me $100 a ticket after I did publicity for them. (Laughs out loud) I'll send them a bill for my publicity.

"Anyway, don't go if you're in LA. I would have paid $1,000 if I had not done publicity for them."

Serena then "re-tweeted" a tweet from one of her followers, benthomas10009, who said: "That is awful, the greatest women's tennis player ever has to pay to see a tennis match...disgusting."

Indeed!

http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/blogs/wor ... cle/20914/

[Otlichno]

Normally I agree with everything that comes out of Serena's mouth.

But this is too much.

[jayl0ve]

BFD

[coke4]

wow a 100$

There goes here holiday in Barbados...c

[Coolhand Texas]

Wouldn't expect anything less from her. Such a disgrace!

[djarvik]

To be honest, they both wrong. The tournament for charging and Serena for pulling crap like that.

They really should just let her in, but the way she reacting is hurting the sport, tennis as a whole. Boycott the tournament? ...don't go there? WTF?!

Another proof of having absolutely no class or regard to sport. Very selfish, ego driven move that hurts the fans and the sport first.

[jayl0ve]

I agree. I actually agree with Serena that it's lame that she had to pay 100$ for a ticket- but she's obviously making much too big a deal of it.

[Coolhand Texas]

$100 to her is like pocket change. no reason for her to do that, even if she shoundt have had to pay for the ticket. Im so sick of her

[coke4]

Im sure they were paying her a sick amount and probably had her in a very nice hotel

[Moralspain]

[Otlichno]

The problem isn't only that she had to pay, the actual ticket cost $60 they wanted her to pay $100.

[djarvik]

The problem isn't only that she had to pay, the actual ticket cost $60 they wanted her to pay $100.

That is because she wanted court-side tickets. They didn't just tried to charge her $40 more .....altho she might of thought this way, which once again, shows that wonderful attitude of "react first think later".

The more I think of it, the more I think Serena is the one with more fault. Supposedly she did the promo for free. She was asked if she would be willing to do this and she agreed. Now, if she wanted some free tickets in exchange for this, she should have negotiated this before, not after the promo.

[Otlichno]

Bleh proven wrong again!



Anyways I don't think this is a big deal at all, I actually think this whole fiasco has given this tournament more publicity than it usually would have.

[ACERBOMB]

The tweet said the greatest womens tennis player of all time had to pay to get in, so is this about Stefi Graf? lol

[jayl0ve]

I think Serena confuses 'attention' with 'respect and admiration'.

she's an attention whore.