Attendances down despite sunshine

LONDON, June 30 (Reuters) With England gripped by World Cup soccer fever, attendances at Wimbledon have been down by more than four per cent in the first week of the tournament after a rain-soaked start turned to blazing sunshine.

But organisers do not blame the soccer, believing instead that office workers have not been tempted down after work to catch some evening tennis as they have in past years.

After a long drought, the opening day on Monday was a washout with only 30 minutes of play possible. Tournament organisers gave out one million pounds (1.83 million dollars) in refunds.

Since then, the sun has blazed down on Wimbledon but the attendance figures have not soared accordingly.

''The numbers have ranged from about 32,000 on Monday to 40,000 on Thursday but we are on average down about 1,700 a day.

A lot of things have gone into the mix,'' said a spokeswoman for the organisers.

''Much of our increased capacity is when people come down after work to get three or four hours of tennis in the evening,'' she said.

But this year's scheduling, which included catching up after Monday's downpour, has meant many of the top matches have been played early.

Taking rain-drenched Monday out of the equation, the combined attendance for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday totalled 118,837 compared with 124,013 over the same three days last year.

Organisers have decided they will not allow England's quarter-final World Cup soccer match with Portugal to be televised on the big screen outside court one on Saturday.

''The players are here to play tennis. We can't have people cheering and jeering outside the courts. It would be distracting. We hope people want to come here to watch tennis not football,'' the spokeswoman said.

Watching the tennis on the giant screen in warm sunshine today, Wimbledon fan James Daly had no doubt about the attendances.

''It is down because of the World Cup. People are staying at home to watch The World Cup,'' he said.

Jamie Barton agreed: ''Football matters more to most people.'' World Cup fever has hit the tennis players too -- Argentina's David Nalbandian asked to play his match early so he could be off court in plenty of time to watch the Argentina-Germany match on television. Organisers agreed and he lost to Fernando Verdasco in plenty of time for the kickoff.

REUTERS HS RAI2300