Media Focus Firmly on Wimbledon Traditions
HISTORY
by Dan Imhoff,
BBC SPORTS
Be it Chinese, Serbian or Brazilian media traipsing the grounds before The Championships, you can count on three main points of interest – the white attire, strawberries and a tale of a broken pony roller.
The enormous media attention leading up to The Championships each year sees organisations from every continent descend on SW19 eager for a point of difference in their coverage of the world’s most iconic tennis event.
For the
Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum’s commercial manager Ashley Jones, the requests usually centre on three things.
“Firstly, they want to know why the strawberries and cream? It’s actually just a coincidence of dates as that’s when strawberries are in season here,” Jones said.
“Next, why do they wear white? That’s because men traditionally wore the same clothes for cricket.
“And the story they never ask but are always fascinated to discover is that the world’s greatest tournament exists because of a broken pony roller in 1877. Basically, they needed to raise money to fix the roller used on the courts so they held a tennis tournament, which proved more successful than they had anticipated.”
Jones said the reason so many media organisations wanted to film off-court pieces before The Championships was in case of likely rain delays during their broadcasts.
“Some days there are three TV groups in at the same time during The Championships starting as early as 6.30 in the morning,” he said.
Within a week’s timeframe, he reeled off visits from Italian, French, Chinese and American media.
“This week we had Fox Italy come in; tomorrow Nicolas Stiel, writing for Challenges, a French magazine, will be in to write about the history and traditions of the Club,” he said.
“On Saturday we had Propeller TV, which will be broadcast on QQ, the Chinese version of Facebook.
“On Thursday we had Laurent Favre for L’Illustre, Switzerland, and on Tuesday and Wednesday we had CCTV5 (China Central Television’s support channel), which will be broadcast to more than 300 million people.
“CNN is in tomorrow, the week before Laruedubac, a publication and website from France was here; in April, Sportsbrand Media from Australia and a Russian film crew visited; and in March, Al Jazeera and the Shanghai Post came in. South Africa’s a good market too, so there’s interest from every continent.”
Coverage during The Championships was broadcast into 189 countries and territories with 3,472 media accredited last year – including 622 press, 2,650 broadcast personnel and 200 photographers and photographic support staff.
The pre-Championships build-up, though, has not been limited to hordes of journalists and broadcast crews, with a host of Wimbledon champions playing their parts in the broadcasts.
In April, CNN brought two Czech-born Wimbledon winners together, current champion Petra Kvitova and her idol, the great Martina Navratilova, to film an interview on Centre Court and a segment on their Championship-winning dresses in the museum.
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“Visit Britain was here, too, with Boris Becker filming a 30-second TV advertisement on why he loves Britain,” Jones said.
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Given the Club is also hosting the Olympic tennis event only weeks after The Championships in 2012, he said the interest had surged on previous years.
“We’re getting more requests from Brazil because they are hosting the Olympics next so the potential market there is enormous,” he said.
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