Advance sales for the first day of the Autumn basho in Tokyo have been sluggish. Over 4,200 tickets remain unsold and will now be offered as same-day sales. That's one of the worst levels of demand in the capital on record. Ryogoku has a capacity of around 11,000. Interestingly, the Sumo Association attributes the slow demand to the absence of tourists, saying that foreign groups sometimes take up to 40% of seats. That sounds to me like an inflated estimate of foreign demand and more like an attempt to downplay the impact of recent scandals and the earthquake on domestic demand.
Source (Japanese)