It was the Temple of tradition, it has become the market of modernity. Wimbledon, the most famous tennis tournament in the world, closes its 125th edition on Sunday: yet another success with the public, approval and popularity. It is perhaps a definitive step towards an epochal anthropological mutation: from the non-plus ultra of Britishness to a pop event. For over a century strawberries with cream, the very orderly queues in front of the Doherty Gates, the silence during the matches on the Center Court, the impeccable (and a little plastered) commentaries of the BBC have been the mark of respectability of the Championships. But times are also changing for the All England Lawn Tennis Club, the oldest tennis club on the planet, whose Committee for about fifteen years has understood that, in order to survive and prosper, a little marketing needed to be added to old lace to arsenic.
In the mid-90s, Wimbledon put his binoculars on and saw the future as visitors to the tournament see it today: new pitches, new spaces, above all for press, merchandising and catering. The strawberry&cream kiosks and Pimm's have been joined by hamburger shops and pizza and fish & chip shops, and even the times are gradually becoming more like a rock concert than an afternoon at tennis. The "roof", the retractable roof weighing 1000 tons but transparent like a greenhouse (and costing 100 million euros) placed three years ago above the legendary Center Court now allows players to play even late in the evening, to the great annoyance of the residents. For the moment, night sessions do not officially exist, but the CEO of the AELTC, Ian Ritchie, announced a few days ago that in the future, Camp Number 1, inaugurated in 2000, could also be covered. After all, the televisions, from which 50 per cent of the tournament's revenues come, adore the matches in prime-time, at eight in the evening, and the visitors to the tennis Luna Park on Church Road, inside and outside the courts, are decidedly different from middle class Londoners of the 50s and 60s.
Now walking around the paths of the colossal facility you can see reckless outfits, bare feet or with dizzying wedges, mini crotchless and flip flops. Fans decidedly noisier than the standard we were used to a few years ago, dressed in a decidedly trashy way, but also players with somewhat borderline outfits. Like those of the American Bethanie Mattek, the Lady Gaga of the courts, who this year showed up on the court with a kind of fur coat trimmed with tennis balls. The Belarusian Victoria Azarenka, then, even showed her middle finger to the audience that mocked her on her midfielder for the excessive volume (95 decibels) of the screams with which she accompanies the shots. Oh, my God.
If at one time barely a "wow" appeared in the radio news, by now the barrier of good taste, through the customs of social networks, has also been crossed by unsuspecting protagonists. Like Judy Murray, the fifty-year-old mother of Andy, the great hope of English tennis, who posted embarrassing messages on Twitter, peppered with "Ooohhh" and "Marvellous!", for her son's statuesque colleague, the Spanish Feliciano Lopez, renamed "Deliciano ” because “beautiful like an ancient god”. Even the Royal Box, the stage where royalty and VIPs sit, has changed its connotation. Once upon a time it was mostly attended by ambassadors with badges and dignitaries in bowler hats, now it has become a stage for reality shows, with top popularity from sportsmen in t-shirts and gossip heroines like Pippa Middleton. The Committee pretends nothing has happened. And cash out.
With one eye, or rather two, open to the global market. The thermometer to understand the health of the Club's finances is the famous surplus, ie the cash surplus net of expenses, the only financial data that the AELTC, a non-profit body, makes public. In the 90s, thanks to the rights sold to German TV channels crazy about the successes of Boris Becker and Steffi Graf, the surplus reached 33 million pounds. Last year, after a period of decline, it returned to 31 and the organizers for the future are counting a lot on the Chinese market, excited for tennis thanks to the Parisian success of the prodigious Li Na. After all, at Wimbledon for some time now the line judges have been wearing Ralph Lauren, and from this year more Lavazza coffee than Indian tea is drunk in the sacred enclosure, while the images of the finals will be broadcast for the first time in 3D thanks to an agreement with the Sony. In short, the merchants entered the Temple. And they also make us gold business.
