146YO Historic Tournament?s US Open-Inspired Ambitions Get a Green Flag as Major Infrastructural Additions Lie in Wait

The Survival of ‘The ‘Fittest‘ is now The Survival of ‘The Largest.’ Long story short, this is the current scenario of the battle between the two oldest and most prestigious tournaments in tennis. Wimbledon Championships and the US Open lock horns to build the largest capacity among the 4 Grand Slam tournaments. Let’s find out more about this.

Tennis is among the most popular sports around the world. People across all continents come to witness their favorite players in these historic tournaments. The All England Lawn Tennis Club has laid down an ambitious project which will help them triple the size of the grounds in the tournament. How?

Influenced by large seating capacities at the US Open, Wimbledon has come up with a new project

The grass court tournament spent a whooping 65 M pounds in 2018 to lease Wimbledon Park Golf Club. Now, the All England Club intends to build 38 new courts including a third show court with a seating capacity of 8000 on land across Church Road. Church Road used to be the home of Wimbledon Park Golf Club. This expansion will allow them to hold the qualifying rounds of the tournaments which were previously held at Roehampton. The governing council of the tournament feels it’s very important to grow and modernize to compete with its rivals.

In comparison with the American tournament, which spent nearly 465 Million pounds to resurrect its reach among the crowds. It has built Louis Armstrong Stadium at USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York to accommodate more than 14000 crowds. US Open already has a stadium (Arthur Ashe Stadium) with more than 22000 seating capacity. In addition to that it has 90 luxury corporate suites, 5 restaurants, and a two-stored lounge for the players. Whereas, the Wimbledon has only 14,979 seating arrangements with no corporate boxes. So, it needed to step up to be in the ever-growing market in the sports industry and it did.

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The mega project of the US Open rival takes a step ahead

The plans for the expansion were submitted two years ago. However, the project hasn’t gone down well with the locals as they protested against it to save the environment. 13000 people came together to sign a petition to ‘Save Wimbledon Park‘. They protested against cutting down hundreds of trees and chanted ‘Trees not Tennis!‘?

But recently the controversial project got a nod from Merton Council. It took almost a 5-hour-long meeting on Thursday at South London to get an affirmative. Even if it gets green signals ahead, there will still be many speed-breakers along the road. Finally, to shape into a full-fledged stadium it may take around 2030, if not more. In a fight to earn more revenues and achieve more heights, which tournament do you feel will get the upper hand?

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