 The attendance in the Houston Astrodome was 30,472; as of 2012, it remains the largest audience to see a tennis match in the United States.There was widespread speculation that Riggs had deliberately lost the match, based on his unusually poor play and large number of unforced errors, in order to win large sums of money that he had bet against himself as a way to pay off his gambling debts.On August 25, 2013, ESPN's "Outside the Lines" featured a man who had been silent for 40 years.