Wimbledon Not Feeling Impact Of Global Economic Downturn
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All England Club Heavily Over-Subscribed,
Delighted With Response For Debenture Sales |
If Wimbledon had "any fears about how the global credit crunch would affect its finances, those worries were wiped out the moment 2,500 Centre Court debentures were snapped up last month" for US$48,830 each, according to Pritha Sarkar of REUTERS. The tournament gets underway next week, and All England Club CEO Ian Ritchie said, "We were heavily over subscribed. We were very pleasantly delighted with the response. Here was a significant investment coming from a market place that has been in difficulty and yet the response was as positive as it was. If there was going to be a real impact for us in the recession, particularly the timing of the offering, it didn't manifest itself." Meanwhile, Sarkar notes while "many other sports are being forced to make cutbacks or seek new sponsors to survive the recession, Wimbledon has bucked the trend and has the luxury of being able to pick and choose the type of brands it wants to be associated with." Wimbledon has "always taken a minimalist approach." Brand placement is "subtle, like Swiss watchmaker Rolex on its scoreboards," and ads are "kept to a minimum on the grounds." Ritchie: "The most important thing for us is brand protection. We do not want to be involved with somebody simply to take the money if it doesn't fit absolutely with our brand and with our longer term objectives. ... Our general view is that we want global, world class brands. If they don't fit that criteria, we don't need to chase the money." Wimbledon has "never disclosed how much individual deals are worth," but the "one thing organisers are certain of is that their pockets are deep enough to ride out any failure of one or more of the tournament's sponsors." Ritchie: "We have an operational profit and if we lost a raft of people then that income would come out of the operating line. The larger chunk of our income is with broadcasters, and even in this difficult time we are in 180 countries and nobody is trying to renegotiate their terms with us for this year" (REUTERS, 6/17).
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