John Redwood is a former Secretary of State for Wales and MP for Wokingham. He writes regularly at his diary.
England should be proud of its great contributions to world sport. Games invented and developed in England have become world favourites, bringing much entertainment, great competition and many well paid jobs to participants all round the world. There are three remarkable English venues that shine in their sporting firmaments and have built big global brands. They are Lords, Wimbledon and Henley.
These are small places with big reputations. So many great cricket players want to play in a test at Lords and see their name on the honours board. Many in world cricket call Lords the home of cricket and look to it for wisdom and guidance over the development of the international game. So many budding tennis stars want to play on the Centre Court at Wimbledon to become Wimbledon champion. Wimbledon is the only Grand Slam tournament played on grass in a fiercely competitive tennis world. World class rowers will come half round the world to row in the Henley week races on the Thames to add lustre to their achievements.
The joy comes from the pursuit of excellence. This is a world where prizes only go to the most talented and hardest working. Standards are so high that competitors are great achievers by qualifying to take part.
What has made and sustained their fame? Some of it is the tradition and history they represent. Some is their skill in modernising and investing as their sport has expanded and changed.
All three have dress codes. To preserve some of the past, players at Wimbledon or Lords tests must play in all white. Rowers must wear club kit and colours. Spectators using the Lords Pavilion or the Henley Stewards Enclosure must wear jackets and ties or the female equivalent. Henley aims to look like a well dressed Edwardian Garden party, and many attendees respond with coloured jackets and club or old school ties for the men and long elegant dresses and hats for the women. The iconic Centre Court at Wimbledon from 1922 and the Pavilion at Lords survive with some modern improvements. Henley keeps the old tents of the temporary Regatta in modern structures for the boat house and still uses the original progress boards adjusted by hand as the race proceeds so spectators can see what is happening below them on the course. All three venues also now use digital communications and drones.
The three venues are owned or controlled by members of a private club. The MCC membership owns the Lords ground and trading assets. Wimbledon is owned by a company controlled by the members of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club committee. Henley Regatta is owned by a private company limited by guarantee controlled by a self regenerating Committee of Stewards of the Regatta. All three started as clubs for amateurs, but have adapted to the increasing presence of well paid professionals in their sport. All three have royal Patrons, the Princess of Wales for Wimbledon and the King for the other two.
All this looks idiosyncratic and quirkily English. What is remarkable is there has also been a steely professionalism in building these brands, expanding their tournaments, and growing such a strong reputation in their global sport. To do this Lords had to evolve from being a North London/Middlesex amateur club ground to be a premier world ground for the most important cricket matches. Wimbledon had to go from being All England to be all world tennis, Henley had to be well managed and important enough to attract the best from as far away as New Zealand and Australia to row.
Crucial to Wimbledon’s continuing success was the all weather roofs for the Centre Court and Court No 1 introduced this century. At Lords the improved and enlarged seating areas and the state of the art enlarged modern media centre were important to retaining a strong position. At Henley better catering and entertainment facilities have helped keep the crowds.
The important issues are: how can the UK keep these great centres and make sure they expand as their sporting worlds expand globally? Both Wimbledon and Lords are embarking on major expansions. Wimbledon wants to put in a new big show court with 38 other new courts to handle the growing numbers that want to compete. They have the land in the adjacent old golf course. Lords is pressing on with rebuilding old stands to provide more seats with more modern facilities for spectators.
The sadness is the planning system seems to set out to make it difficult or to undermine or delay the enthusiasm of the clubs to improve and expand. Wimbledon has been delayed by planning issues over converting the old golf course to more tennis use. It is still waiting on an appeal to a permission which had been hard won with many detailed submissions and much expense. Lords was not allowed to put full roofs on stands to protect spectators from sun and rain and has issues with a private owner of tunnels under the Nursery land to the north of the site about any development of that part of the property.
So far these three sports have been spared the special regulation that is now being meted out to football by a government agency. Some lottery money does help the three underlying sports in England. Many other countries if they had brands as big and so full of possibilities as these three would ensure they could develop their sites as they needed to and would see what an asset it is for the country. Tennis and cricket now mobilise huge sums and generate many good jobs for those who host tournaments, training and good home teams. English test cricketers now can earn seven figure annual sums with a major contribution from their England central contact basic payments. Top tennis stars earn millions a year from prize money. The presence of these large events generates a lot of business in their own right, but also attracts talent and wealthy tourists to the UK to boost our economy further.
Politicians should keep out of sport, and should not get involved in regulating their rules or their finances. They often wish to be associated with winning teams and winning people and like attending the big events. That should encourage them to see just what a crucial success England has had with these venues, and make them more inclined to faciliate their further development and investment.
We are fortunate indeed that successive generations of members and stewards and of the directors of the private companies that run these elite sporting events have balanced old and new, preserved and enhanced reputations and developed their real estate. If these great venues had fallen under international corporate ownership, traditions would have been diluted or removed and talent and resource would have been diverted to outside England.
If the UK state had nationalised them or taken a bigger regulatory role they would have cancelled their history in a fit of embarrassment. They would have throttled them with wokeish values. They would doubtless have plunged them into loss to become subservient subsidy junkies attentive to the damaging wishes of a bossy government.