Written by AELTC

Wimbledon's popularity around the world as the premier Grand Slam tennis event was underlined as figures confirmed that 11.7 million unique users followed The Championships on the internet over the past fortnight, an increase of three million over last year.

In 46m visits, on-line visitors clocked up a massive 287.5m page views, some 31m more than 2007. Each unique user spent an average of 70 minutes logged on to the IBM-run www.wimbledon.org.

Other facts and figures from Wimbledon 2008:

Ground Attendance
• The total attendance figure for the 13 days of The Championships was 475,812, the second all-time highest for 13 days.
• Two day records were set: Saturday 28 June (40,876) and Tuesday 1 July (39,262) .

Catering
• Pimms: 200,000 glasses drunk.
• Strawberries: 25 tonnes consumed.
• Poached salmon: 7000 sides eaten.

Merchandise
The top five best selling items in the Wimbledon Shop were:
• 18,191 Mini yellow tennis ball key-rings.
• 11,000 Men's Championship Towels.
• 8,600 Ladies' Championship Towels.
• 8,000 Twin Wrist Bands.
• 6,300 5" tennis balls for signatures.

Tennis Balls
• Over 54,200 Slazenger balls used during the Fortnight.

TV Viewing Figures
UK
• Wimbledon Men's Singles Final: Watched by a peak audience of 13.1m viewers (9.15pm) on BBC One, representing a 47.6% share of the TV audience.
• Average audience of 8.6m watched the match.

Spain
• Spanish broadcaster Cuatro achieved its biggest figures historically for Wimbledon coverage.
• During the Men’s Singles Final achieved a three-fold increase in share during seven hours on Sunday, up to 24% from an average 8.5%. Coverage peaked at 7m viewers making Cuatro the top channel in Spain during that day.

Countdown to Wimbledon 2008