🍓 The Similarities b/w Wimbledon & the Masters

Move over Michael Rubin’s White Party, it’s Wimbledon’s week.

We have a homework assignment for everyone here (relax, stop groaning it’s not that painful!). Ask your family and friends tonight to name the top 5 sporting events they’d dream attending. Now take those answers…and do nothing with them. Because more than likely, the majority of the people you asked will have responded with either Wimbledon or the Masters in their Top 5. And since we’ve already reviewed the Masters as one of the most prestigious sporting events that takes place in the United States, let’s travel across the pond to Wimbledon — where the tournament has been going on for 2 weeks now and we’ll be able to crown champions in both the men’s and women’s singles events this upcoming weekend.

While we wait for our order of strawberries and cream, let’s review Wimbledon and the similarities it has with the Masters. What’s the history of Wimbledon? What does the business model look like for this nearly 3 week event? And what makes it such a special event for fans, advertisers, and players?

Let’s get after it…

What’s the history of Wimbledon?

• The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (AELTC) (what’s more British than that name? 💂) was founded as a private club in 1868 and it still runs Wimbledon.

• The outfit of choice for Wimbledon players in the 19th century was plain white long-sleeved shirts and trousers for men and full-length white dresses and hats for women — as sweat stains were considered improper.

  • It was not until the 1920s and 1930s that the players, and particularly the female players, began to experiment with their clothing (i.e. shorter skirts, shorts and sleeveless tops were all introduced).

  • Because of this, Wimbledon has a highly stringent dress code that requires all players to dress in white (no off-white, no cream and no color accents).

• For the men’s singles winners the trophy is a silver gilt cup engraved with the words “The All England Lawn Tennis Club Single Handed Champion of the World” and inscribed with the name of winners dating back to 1877 😳.

• For the ladies’ singles winners the trophy is a sterling silver salver, known as the ‘Rosewater Dish’, which was first introduced in 1886.

• It wasn’t until 1968 that prize money was awarded at Wimbledon.

What goes into the business of Wimbledon?

• In 2022, AELTC reported that Wimbledon brought in ~$440M in revenue and ~$59M in profit (~13% profit margins).

• Unfortunately for us, AELTC doesn’t break these numbers down more than that. So we’ll need to compare these numbers to other sources like this Forbes article, so we can better understand what each line item look like.

• Media Rights. If you’ve been around our page long enough, you know it’s no surprise the majority of live sports revenue comes from media rights deals — and, no that doesn’t change with Wimbledon.

  • An estimated $246M currently comes from broadcasting agreements — both domestically in the UK and internationally in countries like the U.S.

    • In the U.S., Wimbledon is broadcasted on Disney’s ABC and ESPN + the Tennis Channel. AELTC negotiated a rights deal with Disney in 2012 for a contract valued at ~$480M over 12 years (ending in 2023).

    • However, an extension was signed in 2021, where the tournament could be broadcasted for 12 more years on the same networks.

      • Starting this year, the extended deal values the rights at $52.5M per year (~$630M total).

    • What’s interesting is that ESPN pays much more for the U.S. Open (~$75M annually) than Wimbledon (~$53M annually) 🤔.

      • It might seem a little odd, but the U.S. Open is a domestic tournament, meaning international competition isn’t as likely.

    • In the UK, Wimbledon does its work with the BBC (see Table 1).

      • The 1996 Broadcasting Act lists the tournament as an event of "national interest" with a "Group A" classification, meaning full live coverage must be offered by services that are free to view and received by 95% of the UK population.

      • If not for this act, AELTC could get more money in the UK market from streamers like, Amazon, Sky, and Eurosport (just like other tennis grand slams) — (Yes, they’re missing out on additional revenue).

  • From a viewership standpoint, last year’s men’s final between Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic pulled in peak viewership of 11.3M in the UK.

    • It was the highest figure since 2016 (13.3M), which was UK native, Andy Murray’s, last Wimbledon championship.

    • Murray was also involved in two of the other highest peak viewerships in 2012 (16.9M) and 2013 (17.3M).

• Ticketing. Ticket sales are Wimbledon’s second largest revenue driver. And it makes sense, it’s a 2-week tournament! But what’s interesting is that Wimbledon has the lowest attendance among all the four Grand Slams…by quite a margin.

  • In 2022, Wimbledon broke a record for ~515K people attending the tournament. Last year, the record was broken again with ~533K spectators.

  • However, they’re consistently behind the pack when you stack them up against the other grand slams: 2024 French Open (675K), 2023 U.S. Open (957K), and 2024 Australian Open (1.02M).

    • One thing to note, Wimbledon only counts the two weeks of the tournament, while the other three include the additional week of qualifiers.

  • Why is this happening? Well, the AELTC refuses to renovate and enlarge their existing courts. Leading to additional ticket sales revenue left on the table.

  • Wimbledon sells five-year debentures (aka premium tickets), providing fans with daily tickets to the tournament for five years at a stagnant price.

    • Since primary market ticket prices range from $10 to $355, Wimbledon could raise prices and make exponentially more in revenue.

    • Instead, they opt to take a page from the Masters, intentionally keeping primary market ticket prices low.

• Sponsorships. This is where Wimbledon and the Masters start to become eerily similar in nature.

  • While the Masters only gets in bed with six sponsors that share 4 minutes of advertising time every hour, Wimbledon has a total of 10-15 commercial partners…way less than any of the other Grand Slams.

  • The sponsorship logos on most courts are black and small, with the exception of Centre Court and Court №1, where they are white.

    • Both cases are barely visible. And the whole point is to focus on the pristine green grass of the courts with minimal distractions to the overall presentation of the event.

    • We could make the case Wimbledon is again leaving money on the table, but that’s the price you pay when it comes to exclusivity and prestige.

      • But it’s not like they don’t work with the top tier brands in the world like: Rolex, Slazenger, IBM, Ralph Lauren, and Evian — where they all pay seven figures annually to be official partners at the Wimbledon Championships.

• Concessions & Merchandise. In terms of concessions and merchandise, this makes up the smallest part of Wimbledon’s revenue. Unlike the Masters though, they offer merchandise online, but it’s not cheap.

  • Wimbledon will typically process about 155,000+ merchandise transactions over two weeks, with 450,000+ products being sold.

  • On the concessions front, we’ve talked about the one classic and famous item…strawberries and cream.

    • They sell around 200,000 every tournament, and it’s pretty cheap, coming out to $4 per serving.

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Quick Hitters

• ⭐️ The Dallas Stars have had enough with Bally Sports (parent company: Diamond Sports Group — DSG) and the rest of the RSN business model, because they’re officially out! The Stars just announced they are launching their own direct-to-consumer streaming platform called, VICTORY+. Beginning this fall, in-market fans can watch games for free as part of a seven-year deal with A Parent Media Co. (APMC). The bankrupt RSN operator drops another NHL team (joining recent departures from the Stanley Cup champs Florida Panthers, Vegas Golden Knights, and the new Utah hockey team). DSG now has rights to 9 NHL teams, down from a prior set of 12.

  • This exit could be the end of Bally Sports Southwest, which also carries Dallas Mavericks games. In November, Mark Cuban said the Mavs would look to end their partnership with DSG following the 2023-24 NBA season. And on the baseball side, the World Series champs Texas Rangers deal with DSG expires at the end of the 2024 season.

• 🤑 Ahhh doesn’t it feel good to hear when football is king again and again and again? Each NFL team (yes, there are 32 of them) received over $400M from the league office for the 2023 season. That number is up 6-8% from the 2022 season. The total represents national media rights, league sponsorships and shared revenue and royalties from the league’s various affiliates and subsidiaries, such as NFL Properties, NFL International and NFL Enterprises and adds up to ~$13B.

  • The league’s media rights contracts with ESPN, Fox, CBS, NBC, Amazon, and YouTube represent the bulk of the equally shared revenue. Last season kicked off the latest round of deals that are worth ~$125B over 11 years.

  • The NFL also had more than three dozen league sponsors in 2023. Many of these brands have been partners for multiple decades, including Gatorade, Visa, Campbell Soup and FedEx, while Oakley and Lowe’s both signed extensions to their deals last year.

  • The national payout is up 115% over the past decade and should rise at a similar rate over the next decade to more than $800M per team due to these secured media deals.

    • Teams receive an additional payout from the league for shared gate receipts, which calls for 34% of each team's ticket revenue to go toward a general pool to be shared equally — that represents another $20M+ per team.