🎾 How Wimbledon Became a Cash Cow

The summer of sport is fully underway.

The Twenty20 World Cup has just finished. The European Championships is at the Knockout Stage and The Olympics starts in three weeks.

It’s crazy to think the Premier League returns in 44 days too!

The content doesn’t stop though, because Wimbledon begins today. The most prestigious tennis grand slam there is.

The crazy thing is Wimbledon, a 14-day tennis tournament makes £80m a year in profit! How the hell is that possible and how has it grown so much? Well, there are 5 ways in which Wimbledon makes money.

Today we explore all five…

This graph shows how much each of the four grand slams made per attendee in 2019:

Wimbledon is a beast but whats fascinating is how much more money they could be making.

This is exemplified with their approach to Sponsors.

Wimbledon has 15 sponsors in total and they all get really limited exposure.

When I think of the Australian Open I immediately think of Kia plastered everywhere. JP Morgan is everywhere at Flushing Meadows in New York.

Which brand do you have in your mind when associated with Wimbledon?

You probably can’t think of one. And that is entirely their intention.

In an email to Forbes, Mick Desmond, commercial and media director of the AELTC, commented:

What a fascinating approach.

Despite this, they reportedly bring in a whopping £40m a year in Sponsorship revenue.

Pretty good going considering their aim to avoid maximising sponsorship takings!

Total revenue at Wimbledon has been rising year-on-year and is set to break £400m in 2024 for the first time:

A big reason for the revenue is attendance. Attendance in 2023 hit a record 532,651 which has helped since they added the middle Sunday as a playing day at the tournament.

Ticket revenue is big bucks. Those of you from London may know that the ballot process for Wimbledon is a stress-inducing affair every year! Despite this, ticket revenue brings in £45m annually for Wimbledon.

Again though, this pales in comparison to the other Grand Slams out there:

The AELTC spent a lot of money to add a roof to Centre Court several years ago but made no intention to increase the capacity of the arena.

• Wimbledon: Centre Court capacity 14,979

• US Open: Arthur Ashe Court capacity: 23,771

As I’m sure you can tell, if Wimbledon added more capacity, they would make more money. Especially from Concessions.

Strawberries and cream, champagne, Wimbledon merch. Wimbledon make £40m a year from concessions. Absolutely crazy money. I’ve been to Wimbledon a few times and I spend a lot of money each time. I don’t mind though as its a great day out. It’s a lucrative venture for the AELTC.

So now we have:

1. Sponsors: £40m

2. Tickets: £45m

3. Concessions: £40m

If you’ve been following TLP for some time you’d understand the rest is going to come from broadcast rights.

The BBC pay TOP dollar to show the rights to Wimbledon every year in the UK.

Whats mad though is recently the international TV rights have grown like crazy making the AELTC loads of money. Once again they recognise the strength in long term deals with the last two American broadcast deals being 11 years each.

It’s difficult to find a number which shows the entire takings from broadcast rights but the AELTC confirm that over half of the revenue comes from broadcasters globally… and that number is growing year-on-year.

Finally you may have noticed that I said Wimbledon has FIVE revenue streams. Well, in 2020 Wimbledon posted a £58.6m profit despite the tournament being cancelled.

In 2003 Wimbledon took out an insurance policy at a steep £1.5m a year which protected the tournament against any type of cancellation. 

17 years later COVID swept over the world cancelling the 2020 edition of the tournament allowing them to claim on that policy.

They received £180m as a payout from that insurance policy! Something no other Grand Slam did.

Madness.

It’s been fascinating researching this topic. We are in an Olympic year so many top players will miss the tournament in favour of the big one in Paris. 

However, Wimbledon dont care. Covid or no covid. Nadal or no Nadal. Olympics or not. The money rolls in every year.

If you want to see more on how racket sports are taking over, watch this video below:

See you next week.