How Wimbledon courts its fans without neglecting business of tennis

BOOK REVIEW: RAHUL JACOBreviews Holding Court: Inside the Gates of the Wimbledon Championshipsby Chris Gorringe Century; £18.99 (€22)

WIMBLEDON’S NEW roof on centre court was used for the first time during this year’s tournament. Befitting a tournament that deftly balances continuity and change, the translucent structure unfolded concertina-style and looked as natural a part of the tennis stadium as a veil would with a wedding dress. Against the odds, the 1,000-tonne roof preserved the sense of a mid-summer, open-air match.

As luck would have it, the first match played in its entirety under the new roof was a five-set thriller featuring local favourite Andy Murray versus the gifted Swiss Stanislas Wawrinka. Murray’s quibbles about the humidity aside, this meant the crowning achievement of the All England Club’s 15-year investment plan had its first day out before a full house and some 12 million television viewers.

In Holding Court, Chris Gorringe, chief executive of the All England Club until 2005, explains how the club has made “the championships” a huge commercial success while remaining almost as diffident about profit maximisation as the Vatican might be. The book is more business lesson than tennis yarn – principally about the importance of treating your customers and suppliers well in the Japanese tradition of long-term relationships.

The club, for instance, has chosen to keep its centre court at a maximum capacity of 15,000, which ensures it remains an intimate venue. It has also kept the allocation of seats to corporate customers below 10 per cent, which means the vast majority of spectators receive their tickets through a public ballot system or through membership of tennis clubs throughout the UK.

These decisions mean that, ultimately, the fans win at Wimbledon. Corporate clients seem happy too: Gorringe reports that Wimbledon’s repeat business on its corporate marquees is more than 90 per cent.

Instead of a blizzard of billboards, Wimbledon spectators are likely to notice only the logos of Rolex and IBM; the more eagle-eyed might also spot Slazenger and Robinson’s.

The All England Club’s rationale is that only products used by the tournament and the players should be visible on centre court; IBM provides the statistics used by the media, while Rolex is the official timekeeper.

This may be quixotic in the extreme, but it contributes to centre court seeming more like a cathedral than a stadium.

Gorringe traces the club’s success to adhering to its mission statement: “We maintain the championships as the premier tournament in the world – and on grass”, and its desire “to foster the best interests of tennis, both nationally and internationally”.

Despite being guided by these tenets – or perhaps because of them – the club has made oodles of money. The surplus from Wimbledon handed over to the UK’s Lawn Tennis Association – in effect, the profit – increased from £306,737 when Gorringe took over in 1979 to £27 million when he retired in 2005.

Admittedly, this has been an era in which the rewards in tennis grew exponentially, but it is still a phenomenal achievement given that, during that time, the club built new show courts and a broadcast and press centre.

Central to the club’s success has been its relationship with Mark McCormack’s International Management Group, which represents the club in television rights negotiations and merchandising deals. When negotiating for the club, the late McCormack was ferocious: he won the assignment to negotiate European television rights in 1982 by promising to double what Wimbledon was making. He also convinced the club to move both the men’s and women’s finals to the weekend, making them more appealing for television.

Gorringe offers insight into the personal attention McCormack devoted to his clients. Similarly, for an organisation that for a couple of weeks of a year has about 8,000 temporary workers, many of whom are elderly volunteers or members of the armed services giving up their holidays, Wimbledon manages to leave the 470,000 fans and the players with the feeling that they have been part of something special, even sacred. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009