Kenneth wrote:

---

Hope she plays in as many UK events as possible, great player and always good to watch. She's made mistakes but hey who hasn't? Wasn't Agassi on coke at some point?
Great to have her at Edgbaston, which has always been a good event but know it's tier 1 (or is it 2?) then the draw has been great last couple of years.

---

 I like watching her play too.  In fact I saw her play at Birmingham a few years back on an outside court that was more sand than grass, the centre court being waterlogged at the time.  The tournament seems to be plagued by poor weather.

The point about her being a draw is just not true: exactly.
In 2016, in which she was largely absent, accounting for all other factors, the WTA saw by far it's laregest ever increase in social media, and all media interaction, across all channels.
More page views
More video views (+1,263.28%)
More retweets & 'likes' (+65.29%)
More commentary/engagement (+199.35%)
More new subscribers to streaming services (+20.23%)
8/10 of the top videos ever produced by the WTA were in the latter half if 2016

and so on. See: https://soundcloud.com/wta-insider/state-of-the-tour-address-w-wta-ceo-steve-simon

Now, I suppose you could argue that it would have been even *more* with Sharapova there. But that's entirely unprovable. What is true is that the WTA had it's best year in terms of the popularity of the tour since the start of the soical media age - and that is by no means a given consequence of time (just ask FriendsReunited or MySpace).

Even the Stuttgart tournament, her secondary home in some senses, had it's best ever year financially, last year. Aided no doubt by the status of Angie Kerber at that time, but so did IW, and many of the large events that would actually have this player supposedly boosting their sales.

Yes, she probably sells tickets to some degree, and now, there is almost an additional rubbernecking premium to boot; but the effect, which seems so obvious on the surface, and is almost taken for granted, is not borne out by much evidence outside of hagiographic coverage.

Julia Carrot wrote:

---

I had to look up 'hagiographic' - good word

---

 You learn something new every day (so did I!)

Stircrazy wrote:

---

She beat Christina McHale by 4 & 2 in the first round in Rome, so she's moved into the top 200 & is guaranteed at least a place in Wimbledon qualies. 

---

She needs 3 more wins to reach the SF here and thus make the Wimbledon main draw on her ranking in this the last counting week. Just the QF won't get that job done.

Standing in her way are initially Lucic-Baroni and then possibly Kerber and Halep.

Hmm, interesting timing.

And is this a specifically Sharapova WC announcement  ( why would you ? ) or a more general WC announcement ?

Somewhat reluctantly on reflection I agree, Helen. There's a slight difference between coming up against say a normal #1 qualifying seed and Sharapova.

She's back, she's clearly playing easily to main draw standard so given we do have Slam main draw WCs in this instance I'd give her one if she falls short of the necessary points.