Tickets for marquee sports events are not cheap. A top Premier League match, where a stadium can pack 40,000 to 60,000 football fans, easily runs £100 for club members, with high prices in the secondary market. A weekend at the recently concluded Silverstone Grand Prix starts at just £155, but prices go into the thousands for the full hospitality experience. However, only at Wimbledon, preparing to spend on tickets is nowhere near enough to get you in. You must be lucky, determined, or both. And yet, tennis fans took note of the empty seats as major stars like Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray took to the court.
For die-hard tennis fans, the hassle, uncertainty and queuing are all part of the Wimbledon experience. But should it be? There are several ways to get tickets—where the total capacity is around 42,000—but none are straightforward. Before the pandemic, fans around the world could apply for the public lottery that closed last December. This year, those who won the right to buy tickets to the canceled 2020 tournament took them away, so there were no new ballots. Attendance is 7% less this year as compared to 2019.
Members of the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA), which regulates British tennis, can opt to ballot to purchase two Wimbledon tickets. For those lucky enough to receive the allotment, it was then a six-step process in which you were answered a series of emails asking you how to purchase tickets, then how to access them in the Wimbledon app. Each stage had a time limit (10 days for this or that). I had to set phone reminders.
The ballot-winners can’t be the selectors and you don’t take the date, the court and the seats offered to you, or anything. Returned tickets can be purchased by others online, but they are faster, and there are no guarantees. It would be nice to gift your significant other and tennis-crazy kid a pair of tickets, but if you’re the lucky ballot winner, you’ll need to attend the tournament in person with your ID. And don’t just click on the terms and conditions without reading. Last year, fans took to Twitter to express their disappointment over ticket purchases being canceled because they used the same credit card for more than one purchase, apparently verbatim.
If money or time is no object, there are other ways to get to Wimbledon. You can apply for a debenture, which entitles the holder to a premium seat each day for five straight tournament years. The cost of a center court debenture in the 2020–25 series was £80,000, which rose to £120,000 a month before the tournament. It can be a good investment: Debentures are the only tickets that can be legally transferred or sold. Last time I checked, debenture tickets for this week were selling for around £2,700 or more. Holding a debenture, however, even if you have defects to liquidate, is not easy. It may take years.
The last option is in the queue. A queue in 2017 was reportedly 7,000 people long. This year the queue started on the Friday before the start of Monday. Ground passes thus far only cost £27 and the championship issues 500 tickets to each of the three main show courts each day, plus an unspecified number of ground passes. But success can be elusive. Every year, there are stories of jolly campers, but I know many more who are stymied by the prospect or don’t have time for it.
The other three Grand Slam events in the tennis calendar operate ticketing systems that do not require advanced knowledge of game theory or a saintly level of patience. The US Open is the easiest, although the French and Australian tournaments offer easier options as well. All have systems in place that help fans access tickets, offer some flexibility but limit the ability of profiteers and brokers to corner resale.
Why not Wimbledon? One difference is that it is the only one of the four Grand Slams run by a private club. The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club is one of the most exclusive in the world with only 500 members. Profits from the championship are transferred to the LTA to fund grassroots tennis; In 2019 it amounted to £52.1 million. While more British players have risen to the top, tennis is still an expensive and exclusive sport in the UK.
For all the talent in the tournament, there is much more to be done. Ralph Lauren uniforms, green and purple flower boxes, recycling bins and net-zero vows exude an image of both timeless tradition and hip modernity. But those queues of vacant seats and the sight of long queues of punters reinforce the narrative that there is something in it all and some backward.
Wimbledon this year is as exciting to watch as ever, but also contrary to the sport’s efforts to be more inclusive. The overly complex ticket system recalls Mark Twain’s observation: the less it takes to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it. Hopefully Wimbledon proves him wrong.
Therese Raphael is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion covering health care and British politics.