Wimbledon plans to serve up online ballot for tickets
New system would replace tennis tournament’s traditional postal process
The Wimbledon tennis championships plans to move into the digital age by developing an online ballot for those wanting entry to the annual tournament, after many years of insisting fans apply for tickets by post.
The move would settle a debate that has raged within the wood-panelled corridors of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, the 151-year-old body that runs the annual competition, over whether to change its restrictive ticketing policies.
Close to half a million people attend Wimbledon each year, with the vast majority of tickets sold through a public ballot many months in advance of the summer tournament that is one of the sport’s four “grand slam” events. Applicants are required to fill out paper forms, send them through the mail along with a stamped-addressed envelope.
The All England Club has been reluctant to tamper with traditions that give the Championships its exclusive glamour, such as insisting players wear predominantly white clothing on court. But among Wimbledon officials, there is a growing acceptance to modernise the ticketing process.
During the past few months, the All England Club has been building a new internet ballot, according to people with knowledge of the plans.
These people added that while the online system remained in development, an official announcement could be made as early as this month with a view to introducing the internet ballot in time for next year’s Championships.
“The benefits outweigh the disadvantages,” said a person close to Wimbledon’s leadership.
The All England Club declined to comment.
Wimbledon is one of the hottest tickets of the British sporting calendar partly because of how difficult it is to gain entry to its perfectly manicured grass courts.
About 17 per cent of tickets are debentures, with wealthy patrons paying as much as £80,000 for a guaranteed seat to the tournament for five years. Another 10 per cent go to corporate hospitality.
A further 1,500 tickets are made available each day of the two-week tournament for Wimbledon’s “show courts”, where the best matches take place, including 500 on centre court. For these, fans must join a queue — which usually involves camping at the grounds for at least a night. A small number of tickets are sold to international customers online.
Otherwise, the majority of seats in the UK are allocated by the postal ballot, which has been oversubscribed for years. About 1.5m people attempt to acquire tickets for Wimbledon every year, mostly through the ballot.
A person close to the All England Club’s leadership said the postal system had the advantage of drawing “fairly determined” spectators, as there have been fears an online system would be flooded by applicants making it even harder to obtain a ticket.
There have also been concerns that older fans who may not be comfortable applying online.
Another stumbling block is that any internet system could be exploited by touts.
At other major events, professional scalpers use “bots”, automated software that can harvest tickets in bulk, so they can be resold online at inflated prices on secondary reselling sites such as StubHub, Viagogo and the Ticketmaster-owned sites GetMeIn and Seatwave.
The global secondary ticketing market is worth $8bn a year, according to Ticketmaster.
Wimbledon has previously sought methods to beat the online touts. One model is a successful experiment in 2016, where it partnered with Ticketmaster for one day’s play to adopt a “paperless” system. Customers could only enter the ground by swiping the credit card that they made payment with online. All 22,000 tickets were sold within 27 minutes of going on sale.
Ultimately, the All England Club appears ready to move towards a digital ticketing system because this would allow it to gather more data about the people coming through its gates.
“A paper based [ballot] doesn’t gather customer information,” said a person with knowledge of the plans. “[The aim] is to create a more meaningful relationship.”