‘WE HAVE UNTAPPED POTENTIAL IN THE US’

Wimbledon CEO Sally Bolton is looking across the Atlantic to grow the Championships’ brand, she tells Frank Dalleres real ambition to grow our audience and enhance our brand properties in the US market, so we’re going to work very closely with them to do that.”

Pinnacle

For Wimbledon, expansion in a more literal sense is the priority. Its plans to bring the qualifying tournament on site and build a third show court on land across the road will go before Merton Council later this year. The hope is that the project will be complete by 2030 or 2031.

“Of course there are some significant benefits for the future of the Championship – it’s about us retaining our position at the pinnacle of the sport,” says Bolton. “But equally important are the community benefits that we want to give back, especially to those who live locally.”

Wimbledon’s status as a member’s club whose profits are mostly reinvested in tennis via a dividend to the Lawn Tennis Association puts it in a unique position. It makes money but none of that goes to shareholders, meaning it is not a target for private equity or sovereign wealth.

“We call them partners for a good reason – it’s not just a commercial transaction for us and them, it’s genuinely a partnership where we have shared goals, a shared set of values, and we believe that we can work together on particular initiatives. Barclays, which is one of our new partners this year, is a great example of looking at the US market. They and we have a

“It’s a subject that everybody is talking about in sport but it’s not something that we’re engaged with,” Bolton says. “We haven’t had any approaches. We are a successful business and organisation and we have the funds we need to deliver the ambitious plans we have. So it’s not really a consideration.”