Wimbledon is the oldest tennis tournament in the world and is widely considered to be the biggest and the most prestigious. It has been held at the All England Club in Wimbledon, London since 1877. It is one of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments, the other three majors being the Australian Open, French Open and US Open. Wimbledon is the only Major still played on grass, the game’s original surface, which gave the game its original name of “lawn tennis.” The five main events are: Gentlemen’s Singles, Ladies’ Singles, Gentlemen’s Doubles, Ladies’ Doubles and Mixed Doubles.
The 129th edition of the tournament will begin on June 29th and will attract millions of viewers from all over the world. Wimbledon is the largest single annual sporting catering operation (1,800 staff members) carried out in Europe. The tournament has come a long way since its inception. In 2007, the men and women singles winners each received £700,000 ($795,655), which was the first year that the men and women received equal prize money. In comparison, in 1968—the year of the first “open” championships—the prize money was £2,000 ($2,273.30) for the male champion and £750 ($852.49) for the female champion.
We took a dive into some ticket information for Wimbledon, according to a study done by international ticketing company Ticketbis.
As mentioned earlier, Wimbledon attracts fans from all over the world, not just the UK. Breaking down ticket sales for Wimbledon, the best-selling country outside of the UK was in fact Spain, with 12.6% of overall Wimbledon sales on Ticketbis. It makes sense that Spain leads that list, as Rafael Nadal, David Ferrer, and Tommy Robredo are some of the top rated players in the tournament and all hail from Spain.
Netherland (9.45%), Italy (8.27%), United States (7.48%), and Ireland (5.12%), round out the top five countries other than the UK looking for Wimbledon 2015 tickets on Ticketbis.
For those who cannot attend the live event, it draws quite a viewership around the world. Novak Djokovic’s victory over Roger Federer in the 2014 Wimbledon Gentlemen’s Singles final drew a peak audience of 10 million viewers in the UK. The Ladies’ Singles Final drew a peak audience of 3.1m viewers (BBC). To compare, ESPN’s broadcast of Gentlemen’s Singles in the United States drew average of 2,456,000 viewers.
The big four are all scheduled to be in this year’s tournament: Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray and Roger Federer. Up and coming players like Kei Nishikori, Grigor Dimitrov and Milos Raonic will try to crash the veterans’ party.
The most highly anticipated tennis tournament will be here before we know it. Don’t miss on attending such a prestigious event and enjoying tennis’ brightest stage.
