27,750 - love

The Wimbledon tennis Grand Slam has announced that it will be seeking to raise almost £60 million through an issue of debenture tickets, tickets which will give their owners a reserved seat on Centre Court everyday for the tournaments 2011 to 2015 inclusive (cost per ticket: £27,750). Why does Wimbledon need to do this, and doesn't it simply exacerbate the already often acute shortage of tickets for the tournament? Accepting that it is a good source of revenue for the organisers, does it not nevertheless reinforce the view that tennis is an elitist sport by effectively denying preferential access to anyone other than those who can afford £27,000+? The debenture issue, which Wimbledon has a history of engaging in, also recalls past developments in football, notably the stadium debenture issues associated with West Ham and Arsenal. When these two clubs proposed the idea of a debenture scheme to fund stadium re-development projects, there was uproar. Why is it that many felt so passionately about these cases but that the Wimbledon case will simply disappear from view? Are such debentures bound up in the history and heritage, the social class system, and British attitudes towards sport? Or do we actually just like and care more about football than we do tennis?