In the hallowed postcode of SW19, where strawberries are overpriced and the Big Agri chemo-spray grass is greener than a corporate sponsor's chequebook, the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) has served up a new kind of championship: the World Woke Open. As Jo-Anne Nadler laments in her Daily Sceptic piece, while 1,000 refugees are gifted free Wimbledon tickets to bask in the glory of Centre Court, the long-suffering locals of Wimbledon Park are left dodging drones, security checks, and the AELTC's expansionist dreams. This isn't just a tennis tournament, it's a masterclass in corporate virtue-signalling, where the scoreline reads: Refugees 1, Locals 0.
Picture this: you're a resident of Welford Place, sipping tea in your garden, when a drone buzzes overhead, likely from some broadcaster chasing "local colour" for Wimbledon's 2025 broadcast. But for locals, this isn't local colour, it's an invasion. The AELTC, once a charming neighbour whose worst offence was the occasional stray tennis ball, has morphed into a corporate juggernaut. Nadler describes how residents now face road closures, parking bans, and lanyard-wearing security youths demanding ID just to get home. It's less "Love all" and more "Locals, bugger off."
The AELTC's latest ace? A £200 million plan to bulldoze a Capability Brown-designed park for 38 new courts, an 8,000-seat stadium, and enough roads to make a motorway blush. Despite 21,000 locals signing a petition and MPs from both sides crying foul, Merton's Labour council and Mayor Sadiq Khan greenlit the project. The Save Wimbledon Park group, armed with pro bono lawyers and crowdfunding dreams, is gearing up for a High Court showdown on July 8th. But with the AELTC already setting up corporate hospitality suites on the parkland, it's clear who's holding serve.
In a plot twist worthy of a soap opera, the AELTC decided that the best way to win hearts and minds is to shower 1,000 refugees with free Wimbledon tickets while offering locals… well, nothing! Nadler notes the club's newsletter trumpets this as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) efforts, a move that smells suspiciously like a PR stunt to curry favour with Khan and his cronies. Sure, introducing newcomers to the joys of tennis is a noble idea, nothing says "Welcome to Britain" like watching millionaires watch balls while eating £10 strawberries. But when locals, who endure the traffic jams and security gauntlets, get zilch, it's hard not to see this as a corporate middle finger.
Imagine the AELTC's boardroom meeting: "How do we distract from our land grab? Easy — free tickets for refugees! It's woke, it's wonderful, and it'll make the headlines. The locals? They'll be fine with another traffic cone and a pat on the head." Meanwhile, residents are left wondering if they'll need a passport to cross Somerset Road, now paved over by the AELTC like it's their personal driveway.
Nadler's nostalgia for a time when Wimbledon felt like "our" championships hits hard. Growing up near St Mary's Church, she recalls spotting players like Roger Federer at local bars, a reminder that the club was once part of the community's fabric. Now, it's a global behemoth, "professionalising, commercialising, corporatising," and apparently colonising every blade of grass in sight. The AELTC's transformation from approachable neighbour to unaccountable overlord is complete, and locals are feeling more like serfs than spectators.
The irony is thicker than the cream on those overpriced strawberries. While the AELTC preaches "Love all," it's clear some are loved more than others. Refugees get courtside seats; locals get security checks. The club paid £80,000 each to golf club members (including Ant, Dec, and Piers Morgan) to secure the parkland's lease, but can't spare a few tickets for the neighbours who've put up with its antics for years. It's a rally of hypocrisy, with the AELTC smashing winners while locals scramble to return serve.
"Glancing upwards only to spot a drone hovering over their gardens last week was the last straw for residents of Welford Place SW19, whose homes overlook the much lauded All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC). While the eye in the sky probably belongs to an accredited broadcaster scouting out local colour ahead of the annual championships, the intrusion felt all too typical of the approach that the Wimbledon high command itself takes to its near neighbours. The annual championships may charm a world audience with its cultivated celebration of grass court tennis, strawberries and a nostalgic evocation of English fair play, but for neighbours this image, as carefully manicured as its famous lawns, is virtually shredded. From a highly controversial planning application to a woke offer of 1,000 free tickets for refugees, local Wimbledonians feel excluded as never before from the international spectacle on their doorsteps.
Nowhere in the mainstream media's fawning previews of Wimbledon 2025 has there been mention of the battle commencing next week in a quite different London court. On July 8th, just as the tournament heats up in its final week, a determined group of local activists is challenging the basis of planning permission granted by the Mayor of London's office to the All England Lawn Tennis Club in the High Court. Save Wimbledon Park will be pinning its hopes on a judicial review. The group which has fought the plans tirelessly has secured pro bono legal support, but is still crowdfunding towards the £200,000 necessary to take their case to the High Court.
At stake is a public park designed by Capability Brown and since designated metropolitan open land, with an adjacent golf course. In its place the All England Club intends to relocate its training facility to build 38 new courts, an 8,000-seat stadium, a 30,000 sq. ft maintenance operation and nine kilometres of roads and paths. Along with 21,000 locals who signed a petition in protest, the area's neighbouring MPs (Lib Dem and Labour) are united in opposition, although after revisions the plans were approved by Merton's Labour council and last September by the Mayor of London. Were it not for the determination of local activists it would have been game, set and match to the Wimbledon overlords.
Along the way the AELTC had paid out nearly £80,000 to each of the golf club members, including Ant and Dec and Piers Morgan, for their share of the remaining lease on the land. To the club's immediate neighbours its territorial ambitions having been making themselves blatantly clear for years now. Until recently, it was possible to drive past the club – along the only road directly connecting the busy London 'villages' of Wimbledon and Southfield – during the championships. A realistic fear now is that the 'temporary' road closures in place only in recent years under the questionable guise of security are set to become a permanent fixture. One clue lies on Somerset Road, the residential border of the existing site, where a public highway has been paved over by the AELTC almost as it if it is claiming its right of passage. A more transparent admission was made by the Club's planning consultant at a GLA hearing last autumn when he admitted that public access to the new site would be heavily limited for most of the year. I made use of the final access before this year's closure to drive past over the weekend only to see the AELTC is already making expansionist use of the parkland with new corporate hospitality suites, car parking facilities and family breakout areas.
As a child growing up within the shadow of St Mary's Church whose spire still graces the sundown closing titles of the BBC television coverage, I found proximity to the club, and the international circus it brought to town, thrilling. We all did. It was then quite common to see famous players enjoying a celebratory drink in a local bar, and more recently I spotted Roger Federer in black tie heading off to celebrate his first Wimbledon title. But like so much of sport, today's AELTC has developed into a different beast. No longer a glamorous but approachable neighbour rooted in its local history, it has moved on; professionalising, commercialising, corporatising and now set on colonising its neighbouring green space. Whether we attended the championships or not it had felt like 'our' championships; now it feels like 'theirs', despite, or perhaps because of, this global behemoth's CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) efforts.
So how is the Goliath in this dispute looking to subdue the David on its green flank? By firing up its gold-plated community affairs operation. I still have family and friends living on the boundaries of the club. It is these immediate locals who in good spirits accommodate the traffic, the noise, the parking restrictions, even the requirement to prove their residency to lanyard-toting security youths just to gain access to their own homes for the duration of the championships.
It wouldn't take a PR genius to consider that the offer of tickets to these beleaguered locals might be an obvious place to start in winning them over. But instead neighbours learn from the latest championship newsletter that the focus for outreach appears to prioritise the global south over south-west 19. Whereas free 'family events' are offered to the qualifying competition, it is one thousand refugee guests and their support teams that are offered complimentary tickets to the event proper.
Could this be a generous way to encourage newcomers to embrace the best of British? This would be a worthy endeavour, especially as the local demographic has changed dramatically in recent years so that it is as usual to see women who are completely covered as it is to see women in tennis gear. Cynicism aside – if the AELTC is extending 'Love all' with unapologetic pride in its history and the culture it represents it should earn the applause of Centre Court. If on the other hand, if this is a transparent play for the favour of local politicians and Sadiq Khan while a billion-pound development scheme remains in question, the utterly unaccountable behemoth that inhabits a beautiful site in South-West London will seem even less a well-intentioned neighbour than yet another entitled, globalised corporation with scant regard for its immediate impact."