How Many Fans Attend The Phoenix Open?

The WM Phoenix Open is also known as The People’s Open, and that alone tells you how popular it is, with fans regularly flocking to all four days of the PGA Tour event, as well as the three leading up to it.

Nowadays, it’s harder than it used to be to gauge exactly how many fans attend the event each year as neither the daily nor weekly attendance statistics are released - a decision that was announced before the 2019 tournament.

At the time, Chance Cozby, who was the tournament director back then, explained the decision had been because the focus was more on the impact the event had on charity.

Per azcentral.com, he said: “The only number we really care about is charity. I’ve been in the group since 2010 and I can tell you that, internally, we never have any attendance goals."

That may well be the case, but it doesn't stop fans wondering just how popular the tournament is each year. While attendance figures are now kept under wraps, the numbers for the 2018 edition still give us a good idea of how many fans are expected.

The 2018 event saw an incredible 719,179 fans pass through the gates including the three days before it began. Those three pre-tournament days accounted for 142,313 fans, with an enormous 576,807 piling in between Thursday and Sunday, including 216,818 attending on Saturday alone.

That wasn't an anomaly either - Saturday is traditionally the most well-attended of the week and the figure for 2018 wasn't too far short of the 250,000 estimated to have attended the entire week's action at last year's fourth Major of the year, The Open at Royal Troon.

The figures also show that the event has only grown in popularity through the years. The final year the tournament was played at Phoenix Country Club was 1986, which had a record attendance of 186,000, but the move to TPC Scottsdale immediately made that seem sparse, with 257,000 fans flocking to the 1987 tournament. By 2002, the attendance was higher than the 500,000 mark for the first time across all seven days, before surpassing 600,000 in 2016.

While we don’t have the precise figures for more recent editions of the tournament, it's not hard to see that it remains hugely popular - a fact Crosby touched on back in 2019, adding: “We understand that we have the biggest event on the PGA Tour. When you look out there, you know the attendance is big."

Every year, the players compete before huge crowds, with the famous stadium hole alone, the 16th, estimated to have a capacity of between 16,000 and 20,000.

Overall, despite some wild scenes at the event, the huge crowds add to an already momentous few days of sport in the US with the Super Bowl taking place on the day of the final round.

Given that, it’s safe to say its status as The People’s Open is likely to remain unthreatened for many more years to come.