From Wimbledon, Vanni Gibertini
Many tennis fans would consider working at the All England Club an incredible privilege, a dream come true. But that is not necessarily true only for tennis fans. If you are Mick Desmond, for example, and you are the Director for Marketing and Media for the most prestigious tennis tournament in the world, you are in the unique position to be chased by global corporations desperate to partner with your brand, and you have the luxury of evaluating whether the deal is good enough. And you get to say “no” to them, more often than not.
It certainly sounds appealing to the thousands of marketing managers struggling to get some visibility for their brands, but Wimbledon has built throughout the years an impeccable reputation of style and excellence and it goes to great lengths to preserve it. “We have a small number of partners with whom we have been working for a very long time – explains Desmond to a group gathered on the media terrace at the All England Club just before start of play – Slazenger [tennis balls] has been with us since 1902, Robinsons [orange squash] since 1935, Rolex since 1978. We prefer to have fewer category-specific partners providing goods and services that improve our spectators’ experience and go deep with them”.
There are only 13 companies that can pride themselves on being Wimbledon partners, and a fourteenth one has been signed just a few days ago: American Express will be the Official Payment Partner from 2019 onwards. Unofficial but reliable sources talk about a $5 million per year contract to have the US payment company add Wimbledon to its portfolio of tennis tournament after it has been a partner of the US Open for over a decade. “We are looking forward to working with them, their idea is to reward their cardholders, not to the detriment of any other cardholders Mastercard of Visa”.
“We are very selective with the selection of our partners – explains Desmond – we need to understand how they buy into our brand. Wimbledon needs to be the hero brand celebrating their brand, not the other way around. Some companies approach us in a different way and we have to say that it is not for us”.
The computer giant IBM has been a Wimbledon partner since 1990 and is continuing this relationship despite having terminated the agreement with two of the other Grand Slam tournaments (Australian Open and Roland Garros), causing a considerable drop in the quality of their digital presence (website and app). “I don’t know what pushed IBM to take this decision with the French Open, but in the case of Wimbledon our relationship is much deeper, they don’t only work with us during the Championships, they provide support to the All England Club all year round”.
Approximately half of the revenue generated by Wimbledon comes from broadcasters through the sale of TV and digital rights to the Championships. “Even with broadcasters we try to have long-standing relationships, BBC in the UK, ESPN in the US, NHK in Japan, We also look at alternative ways of distributing the content: in China most of our matches are distributed through a streaming platform, and even the more traditional rights holders do stream all matches on top of the traditional broadcasting methods. I believe demand for premium live sports is always going to be there, and we need to be prepared to adapt to the demands of our public: that is also because we have decided to have our own channels and control our own production”.
The All England Club is looking for “storytelling” in their partnerships, that’s why they are not interested in having just banners on-site and also the reason why they control all the imaging around the Club in the SW19 area: “We want to take up all the billboards in the two tube stations, the roads leading to the Club, we are running activities in the Queue. We have a very good relationship with the local authorities, cultivated throughout the years”.
With regards to ticket pricing and ticket distribution, the guiding principle inspiring the Club is “fairness”: “Our debenture product is currently priced at £100,000 for two tickets, then we have a very high entry point for hospitality, and finally we want to provide a product to all the fans who want to experience Wimbledon. We could sell out the entire tournament without the need for a Queue, but that tradition has become by now part of our brand and we want to continue. The last thing we want is increase our prices to the point that our courts are only two-thirds full: that would be detrimental for our broadcasters”.
