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The organisers of the Wimbledon tennis championships are targeting India for growth due to the country’s strong cultural ties to the UK and its huge number of sports fans.
Sally Bolton, chief executive of the All England Lawn Tennis Club, told the Financial Times that India had joined the US as a main focus for growing the audience of the sport’s oldest Grand Slam tournament, which begins later this month.
The AELTC is exploring a range of things “both physically and digitally” to expand Wimbledon’s reach in India, including potentially staging exhibition grass court matches in the country featuring famous cricketers.
“India is the one where [we see] such an enormous opportunity sitting there,” said Bolton. “We see the historical relationship between the UK and India and some of those cultural ties between the two nations as providing a foundation.”
Wimbledon is broadcast to Indian viewers on Star Sports and will be streamed on JioHotstar, the online platform formed six months ago through the merger of the Ambani family’s Reliance media business and Disney’s Indian operations.
It has amassed 280mn subscribers, largely because of its broadcast deal with the Indian Premier League, the hugely successful cricket tournament.
The AELTC hopes that by growing the audience for Wimbledon in India it can generate higher revenue from media rights and sponsorships in the country.
“If you’re continuing to grow your audience and the quality and depth of your engagement with the audience, everything else flows from that in terms of value in the brand, scale of your organisation, commercial opportunities,” said Bolton.
Last year two Indian cricket legends — Sachin Tendulkar and Rohit Sharma — posted pictures on social media while courtside at Wimbledon. The pair have a combined Instagram following of 95mn, compared with Wimbledon’s 6mn. Bolton said these moments had “enormous cut-through”.
“A lot of [interest] is focused on cricket, but people in India are extremely passionate about their sport.”
The AELTC, which distributes 90 per cent of its profits to the Lawn Tennis Association, the sport’s governing body in the UK, grew its revenue from Wimbledon by 7 per cent last year to £407mn. It handed over almost £50mn to the LTA.
The organisation is one of several sporting bodies looking to build a presence in India.
In April, the English Premier League opened its first office in Mumbai and WWE has promised to stage a “premium event” in the country in the next two years. The organisers of the Olympics have added cricket to the roster of events for the Los Angeles games in 2028 to boost its attractiveness to Indian viewers.
Adam Kelly, president of sports marketing agency IMG, said sports rights holders had historically found India to be a challenging market due to the dominance of cricket. But the current media landscape, with hundreds of millions of Indians subscribing to streaming platforms, has made it easier to reach consumers.
“The middle class in India is as big as the populations of other major territories,” he said. “If you can engage that population to even a fraction of the degree to which they’re engaged in cricket, then you’ve got something really meaningful.”
Wimbledon has in recent years been pushing to grow its audience in the US. This year “The Hill” will return to the banks of the East River in New York, where the men’s and women’s finals will be shown on a big screen as part of a mini-festival featuring a performance by British pop star Rita Ora.
Alongside international audience growth, Bolton expects a significant increase in revenue from merchandise sold online to fans overseas. Wimbledon brought its retail operations in-house about a decade ago and designs its own range of apparel, homewares and souvenirs, alongside its long-running partnership with US fashion house Ralph Lauren, which produces a range of premium Wimbledon clothing.
Bolton said online sales, which rose 15 per cent last year, were still “in the foothills of what we think is possible”.
“It’s not just event merchandise. It’s not even just really retail. It’s that idea of a lifestyle brand and all the things that come with that,” she added.
Prize money for the two Wimbledon singles champions, which has risen by £300,000 to £3mn this year, is the highest at any Grand Slam.
However, the stadiums used at Wimbledon are smaller than those at the other three Grand Slam events: the US Open, the French Open and the Australian Open, where attendance is more than double that of Wimbledon.
In an effort to narrow that gap, the AELTC is planning an expansion of the club grounds, which would add a new 8,000-seater stadium and dozens of new grass courts. However, the plans have faced fierce local opposition.
