Wimbledon tennis fails to go through the roof

....principally because the roof was shut and was therefore doing its job well. After decades of rain affected, incomplete matches, the All-England club last night successfully closed its brand new £50 million roof to enable the match between Murray and Wawrinka to finish (which it duly did, at 22.38 London-time). With Wimbledon having suddenly dived headlong into the 21st Century, a whole series of important issues has emerged: Ian Ritchie, Chief Executive of Wimbledon, has spoken glowingly about the new roof; the BBC's audience peaked at 12 million, instantaneously establishing Wimbledon as a newly reinvigorated television spectacle; Andy Murray complained that the combination of grass, a roof, a late night and the heat made for difficult playing conditions; and those attending the match expressed concerns that afterwards they were unable to find their way around the Wimbledon site - a site which is not usually used at such a late hour and thus doesn't have e.g. the lighting that is needed to ensure people move around safely. Thus, what should the organisers of Wimbledon learn from this new experience? Can the tournament proceed in both the short-term and the long-term without any further work on the site being undertaken? Are there particular issues or concerns that the event manager's need to address if the new roof is to be the asset that many are already purporting it to be? And what will happen when it rains? A warm summer night could well be a considerably different experience to a wet Wednesday afternoon, characterised by torrential rain - has Wimbledon thought about or accounted for the differences? In this context, how have any associated risks been identified and addressed, and what contingencies are there in place if the roof, or any other part of the tournament experience, causes difficulty in any way?

Court out by a Mango

Following the attention that ambush marketing has recently been receiving, both in this blog and elsewhere, I received the following e-mail over the weekend: "I had centre court tickets for [Wimbledon] last week. Get off tube at Southfields and pick up all the usual freebies on the 15 min walk up Wimbledon Park Rd. Have bottle of Evian and a fizzy drink in a can 'Rubicon' Mango I think. When they check my bag at the entrance - I'm told I can take the Evian in (official sponsor) but can't take the Rubicon into the ground. I either have to drink it before entering (which I did) or dispose of it - there were piles of Ribena, Mars bars (I think) and cans of Rubicon where people had just left them. When I question it, I'm told 'ambush marketing'. Just how mad is this? These guys can't start telling me what I can / can't take into an arena? This belongs in a totalitarian state; my guess would be that some of this stuff must contravene Human Rights law." Is this true? Is sport heading for confrontation if it continues to adopt a zero-tolerance approach to 'policing' what event managers and sponsors perceive as being ambushing attempts? Or are ambush police now behaving disproportionately? Are such actions justifiable and necessary, or are they now becoming entirely reprehensible? And how long before a human rights group, lawyer, consumer protection group or another similar organisation, take matters into their own hands, and how will/should sport and its sponsors react to this?

Hello Moto

While F1 does its best to destroy itself through a mixture of politics, a failure to agree how the sport should move forward, and the absence of truly exciting racing, a rival motor sport series goes from strength-to-strength, providing a lesson in how to re-organise, brand and deliver exciting motor sport. Motor cycling's international MotoGP series is thriving; in the last race, the Catalunya GP in Spain, Valentino Rossi was victorious after the lead had changed three times on the last lap alone. Heading into this weekend's Dutch Grand Prix at Assen, three riders were tied at the top of the championship - Rossi, Casey Stoner and Jorge Lorenzo. The sport is a phenomenon, with a huge following in countries like Spain, Italy and France, and races in countries as far afield as Qatar, Great Britain, Japan and the United States (http://www.motogp.com/) One simple question: such has been the success of MotoGP over the last decade, what can F1 learn from its two-wheeled rival?

Water, water everywhere....but cover the label

A really nice piece of Wimbledon coverage from Kevin Eason at The Times: "[Andy] Murray was swigging from a bottle provided by Highland Spring, a sponsor reckoned to pay around £1 million-a-year to keep the Murray tonsils lubricated. But that is Verboten here at Wimbledon because it has its own sponsor, Evian, who pay an awful lot more for the privilege of being the only H20 provider on site. So Murray was instructed to tear the label from his illegal bottle so we poor saps in the crowd would not be led down the paths of watery unrighteousness in the thirst department." The story ties in nicely with a working paper we have just published here at CIBS entitled: 'A Typology of Ambush Marketing: The Methods and Strategies of Ambushing in Sport' http://www.coventry.ac.uk/researchnet/d/755
Did Murray deliberately or accidentally ambush Evian (did he actually ambush or was he just complicit)? If deliberate, what might be the the implications of his actions? What should the implications of his actions? Should tournament officials impose sanctions on him? Or would this be complete madness? Did Highland Spring ask Murray to do what he did? What should be done if they did? What if they applied pressure on him? Given that Murray tore the label off his water, isn't it 'story over'? Or is it a case of objective achieved (although the label came off, the story has drawn attention to Highland Spring)? And should any of this matter? Hasn't sponsorship gone mad, and aren't ambushers simply providing unnecessary further corporate distraction from the central attraction - the sport?

Futurology Focus

I was really fortunate yesterday to be able to spend time listening to a presentation by Robin Mannings, Chief Researcher and Futurologist for BT Innovate. In his presentation, Mannings set out his predictions for the long-term challenges that he thinks we are all facing. Given the pervasiveness of these challenges, they will inevitably impact upon sport and it would therefore seem worthwhile summarising them to promote consideration of just exactly how sport will be affected:

• Financial chaos: it was stated that, with current UK debt levels running at 300% of GDP and with other countries also suffering similar debt crises, the economic problems of the last two years are a slow-burner that will continue to cause further, future, possibly even more serious, problems;
• Global pandemics: with bird flu and now swine flu thought to be posing a danger to human health, and with global mobility ever increasing, the threat level of virulent viruses will remain high;
• Extreme weather: there was no debate here; weather patterns are changing, the climate is definitely changing, and the climate problems we are therefore likely to face will intensify leading us into a need to radically address both how we consume/produce, and how we respond to the difficulties we will inevitably face;
• Energy demand: a specific issue about the use of current use of unsustainable sources of energy that one can nevertheless extrapolate from into a more general discussion about future competition for resources and space, allied to the likelihood of major human security worries;
• Demographic shifts: larger populations, ageing populations, more mobile populations, sedentary lifestyles; all will cause major headaches for governments, for the financial system, for health care providers et al.

Hence, the important questions would seem to be: how will each of these mega-issues impact upon sport, how will sport respond and what will sport therefore look like in 50, or even 25, years time?

Murray's minted

It's open season at the moment as commentators across Britain have been speculating on how much Andy Murray will be worth following this year's Wimbledon, especially if he wins the men's singles title. With his career prize winnings amounting to somewhere around £4 million, predictions of Murray's endorsement value have ranged from career earnings of £80 million (a prediction admittedly made by Murray's agent) through to £10 million from such deals. Moreover, there are suggestions that if an unsuccessful British (former) player like Tim Henman can earn a career total of £20 million from endorsements, then things should be plain sailing for a winner like Murray. As if to accentuate this even further, Murray has just signed deals with CAA and 19 Entertainment (in the latter case joining David Beckham on the company's roster of clients). Is all of this realistic thinking on the part of commentators and Murray's advisers? Does Murray really have what it would take to make him a major endorsement property in tennis, let alone sport generally? Is he the finished product? Does he have the looks, persona and performance to enable him to compete for the top money with Federer, Nadal et al? Are the raw materials there? What role will intermediaries play? To what extent can 19 Entertainment do for Murray what they have done for Beckham? Could whatever issues there might be in building the Murray brand be addressed if he married someone famous, was photographed in popular night-spots, and picked up some famous friends? For a man who is known for being somewhat humourless, how should Murray's advisers work-up the brand? Is edgy the way to go? Is there something there, say, for brooding teenagers? Or are there other target markets which, with some appropriate image management, Murray could appeal to? And a leading final question: Andy Murray or Cristiano Ronaldo? Which one is worth £80 million, and which one is more likely to be an endorsement success?

Gimme a break!

The Spanish government was set to remove a tax-break on high-earning foreigners (a tax-break aimed at encouraging leading executives to relocate to Spain) that would have hit the pocket's of Real Madrid's incoming galacticos (Mk II) hard. The plan has now been rejected, and the proposed increase in tax from 24% to 43% will not therefore happen. Cristiano Ronaldo et al. will probably be breathing a sigh of relief. Last year, the British government, in a similar move, announced that the earnings of players appearing for an overseas team in finals staged in the country would be exempt from taxation. It is thought that Wembley lost out in its bid to host UEFA's 2010 Champions League Final because players were liable to pay tax on earnings from bonuses and endorsements, should they play in the UK. However, the British government changed the law, and Wembley subsequently won the right to stage the 2011 Champions League Final. Are such tax advantages right? Are they fair? In terms of Adam Smith's canons of taxation, can we agree that both the Spanish and British governments were correct in their approach to managing these sports taxation issues? Does sport, does football, deserve such breaks? Aren't such tax advantages discriminatory, and shouldn't the general population be concerned? Or is it important that governments do their utmost to promote the hosting of leading sport events and support the immigration of the world's leading players and athletes? Indeed, taking the example of Ronaldo (CR9®?) as a case in point, if he is going to sell as many shirts as people think he will, could the net outcome be that whatever tax benefits are conferred upon such people, the economic activity they induce actually generates tax revenues in excess of any tax advantages they are given? Overall therefore, should tax breaks of the nature described above be made more progressive, more regressive, or should they remain the same?