Someone should slap this idiot:
Like many of us, Marcos Ortega enters the Wimbledon public ticket ballot every year in the hope of seeing some championship tennis. In seven straight years of trying, however, he has never got lucky. So he was delighted – initially, at least – to learn there was a way to secure a ticket for every game played on Centre Court.
But Ortega’s hopeful delight quickly turned to anger when he discovered that it would cost him £293,000.
“I’ve played tennis all my life and I’d really love to go to Wimbledon. It’s the premier tennis competition in the world,” he said. “But I’ve never got any in the ballot, and the queue is ridiculous. Now, I learn that if you’re rich enough there is a way to pay your way in. It doesn’t seem fair.”
Yes, debentures. Which are loans to Wimbledon to enable them to be able to build courts and stands and all that. In return you get free tickets.
“Wimbledon promotes itself as the most democratic and diverse tournament,” Ortega said while warming up for a friendly match with his girlfriend on public courts in Clissold Park, north London. “But this shows it is really about making the most money possible.”
Someone slap that ignorant twat.
‘Man discovers commercial reality.’
Try Wembley, Twickers, Lords, Royal Opera House….oh anywhere really.
PS, I belong to my local tennis club and every LTA member can go into the ballot, courtesy of your mobile telephone. I’ve been three times in the last five, so he seems really unlucky. Or maybe he’s making that bit up….?
Sorry, I forgot. My Wimbledon visits didn’t include a Centre Court ticket for any top flight final.
Anyone thinking you can go to the ticket office and buy one over the counter er… isn’t thinking.
Yeah i went 4 years ago. No.1 court. (Katie Boulter lost) 70quid. My freind got them online official site released months in advance. This guy deffo hasn’t been trying hard enough… or is fibbing…or is the type that just expects complimentary tickets to the Royal Box for nought.
He’s a lefty cunt. All of the above. None are mutually exclusive.
Wait til he discovers what things like Ferraris, Patek Phillipe watches and houses in Knightsbridge cost!
Being to buy things others can’t is the entire point of being better off/ rich/ wealthy/unequal.
I’ve seen it explained that the whole philosophy of socialism can be summed up in three words: ” It’s not fair.” One of the first sentences a child learns.
And for the right, the words are “Get over it.” which is the response the new parent learns.
Or, nowadays, if they’re “gentle parents”, they don’t. You can’t just blame the Boomers for this, because we’re already rotten. The rot set in with the Silent Generation who, having been through the war and leaving (genuine) austerity behind in the post-war boom, wanted a nicer life for their kids. Hard to blame them but look what happened.
Ah yes: also successful commie efforts to undermine society, starting in education.
I used to work with some guy, who stated that his mother’s dearest wish was to see the New Year’s Concert in Vienna.
So for years he coralled his friends and colleagues into applying for the ballot for tickets. Naturally, of course no one got them. Every year he would then complain about how corrupt the Austrians were, keeping all the tickets to themselves.
One day one of our Austrian colleagues piped up and sent us all a mail along the lines of “I offered to get you a ticket for 800 Reichsmarks, you turned me down. I called in some favours to do that. Please dont ask again.”
The fellow was on a decent whack and the fact that he was too mean to stump up a few quid for his mum enraged everyone. I havent spoken to him since.
I used to go to Wimbledon in the late 1980s as a lad. Turn up about 7am, queue for about 3-4 hours, buy a ticket on the gate then wander in and watch matches at any court I wanted – including centre court and number 1 court. No reserved seating, so mostly standing. But still. Could do.
Last year, for the first time in nearly 40 years, I went. Discovered the ticketing system had changed – ballots (good luck with that), vastly expensive debentures, or queuing. So, queuing it was – accompanied by bumpf about all of that, as it turned out, bollocks about a democratic tournament which encouraged mass audiences to attend.
The reason it was bollocks was because with gate tickets the only matches you could watch were mixed doubles of people you’d never heard of on court 16. The rest of the time you were just milling around in a horde which would make a Levantine souk-owner blush. You even had to queue for the souvenir shop.
It was obvious that the Wimbledon PTB had decided to pivot to encouraging attendance by as many of us peasants as possible but with little to no hope of seeing the best players. The experience, in reality, is just attending. Like going to Legoland. All you do is mill around and queue.
Well, it’s their business. Equally, it’s my money, and since it was such a shit experience, I am not returning.
And the bumpf about making it accessible is, as I may have mentioned, bollocks.
They’ve actually turned it into a far less accessible experience than it was.
As we’re all agreed, their business. Do what they want with it.
And as a customer, I’ll try Queen’s club instead.
“The experience, in reality, is just attending.”
And for a lot of people, this is what they want. Wimbledon is an iconic venue, so when you take your Instagram snaps of you and your mates drinking some fizz and eating strawberries, everyone knows where you are. What do girlies really care about? Shopping, drinking, and showing off to other women. #Wimbledon. They won’t go to Queen’s because they don’t care that much about the tennis, but also Queen’s doesn’t have that immediate brand recognition.
It’s the same with people spending £200 to hear Placido Domingo sing badly. He was one of the greatest, but he’s 85, his voice is knackered. Spending £20 at Wigmore Hall gets you a better singer. But, they don’t have his name recognition.
As the conductor on the electric tram going up Snaefell said about the Isle of Man TT: “You come up here, stand by the side of the road, a bike goes “zm” and that’s it. Watch it on the telly at the pub, as God intended.”
My brother bought a debenture for Murrayfield. How else was the Scottish Rugby Union meant to fund its improvements?
Neither my wife nor I are seriously into tennis, but she wanted to cross Wimbledon off the bucket list. Anyway, 2nd or 3rd time of trying she got tickets for the last day on Court No 1, 2 years ago. So we dressed up a bit & went down. Nice atmosphere and she was pleased to see the wheelchair doubles final. Then they opened Court 2 with big screens to see the men’s final, and we got to see Alcaraz beat Djokovic. The atmosphere, even on Court 2 was amazing.
Where does the term “bucket list” come from? Why bucket? Someone used it to me a while back & I wondered WTF they were talking about.
Probably a list of things to do before you kick the bucket
Fuck em. I’ll do what I’m interested in, thanks.
Yeah but interested when? There’s a lot of things I’ve thought I would like to do in some future. But the me that arrived in that future had changed due to experiences along the way & no longer wanted to do them. And no doubt it will continue to rinse & repeat for anything I’m thinking about now.
Having a “bucket list” implies having a horrifically static life. No thanks.
Precisely, BiS. Somewhat to my surprise I found when I turned 60 that I’d lost interest in doing things I was interested in. It’s only become worse since then.
I guess that’s the point. We all get to do what we have to to exist, bring up kids, whatever. Then there’s things we want to do but can’t right now because of money, bringing up kids, whatever. So we have to delay the satisfaction & then hopefully get to do them when we have time, resources, whatever. Doesn’t always work, and I wonder how many people actually get to cross off all the things on their mental (or explicit) bucket list?
The movie was OK, if a bit sentimental.
Childless selfish cunts do. Others, not so much. I didn’t fly on Concorde. I’d love a Spitfire flight but can’t spare the cash, so won’t. I might manage a spin over London in a Dragon Rapide from Duxford, having taken a circuit in one about 30 years ago, but it’s doubtful. Never been to South America; never will. Same for China but was never interested anyway. Africa? Fuck off, you must be joking. Bungee jumping? Fuck off.
I’ve done a circuit round the Blackpool Tower in a Dragon Rapide. Happy childhood days. On those hols I also saw Charlie Cairoli, a clown who was actually entertaining. A rarity. Funny how patchy memory can be.
A few years ago I joined the GB team in a “Masters” competition (for avoidance of doubt I was just making up the numbers for it to count as a team: there was a guy far better than I who was a few months too young); the team leader gave an “inspirational” talk that included “I want a world record”. I think I should like one.
Cash isn’t the problem, ability is.
I was going to make a bucket list but then I thought, how many buckets do I really need?
I took my Dad, an ex WWII navigator/observer, in a Dragon Rapide flight from Duxford a few years ago. Only a circuit round Duxford really. Dad told the pilot, a A320 driverin his day job, that the Dragon Rapide was the first aircraft they took them up in from Cranwell when he went there for training in 1942. The pilot said that aircraft came from Cranwell so it could even have been the same one.
And indeed it is. Anyone, from any race, social class or imagined gender can buy a ticket.
Stated versus revealed preferences again. Claims to love tennis but can’t be arsed to queue for a ticket.
If you are really interested wouldn’t it be a better idea to spend your money on a really big telly? OK it’s not the same as being there and seeing it live but you will get to see a lot more of the action. You could also stock up on strawberries and fizzy wine at Asda without being fleeced.
But then you only get to see what the broadcasters want you to see. They’re not covering tennis; they’re covering would-be celebrities who happen to play tennis. Oh, and the politics too.
I frankly enjoy doubles, and seeing how the US Open tried to kill mixed last year is enraging.
Depends on the broadcaster but with streaming you aren’t limited to the broadcast channels. This is BBC in UK:
They may have done this last year – can’t remember – but it’s a lot better than just broadcast now.
Sadly I can’t provide you guys with a VPN port in the UK.
Tennis is one of the few sports which are better IRL than on telly. Reasonable seats give you a good view of the action. But sports played on a large field: – football, rugby, baseball – at least half the time the action is so far away you get a much better view on TV (you do get the feel of being part of a big crowd, of course, which isn’t nothing). And motor sports, as already pointed out, are a couple of seconds vrrrm and then nothing (though you can watch the action on a big screen) – speedway is another exception.
Don’t watch the Tour de France: there isn’t even any vroom.
I love watching the TdF, but mainly as a travelogue of unrolling scenery. Having said that, the competitors are some of the fittest athletes on the planet: how many sportsmen could run a double marathon every day for 3 weeks, half of them up the side of a mountain? And then they fall off at 80kph and, rather than spending ten minutes rolling around on the ground, get back on the bike and finish the course, even with a fractured pelvis.
“Clissold Park is a public park tennis facility with courts operated by Hackney Tennis (a community-focused provider). It has received funding and support from the LTA (Lawn Tennis Association) and LTA Tennis Foundation for court resurfacing, Park Tennis Project improvements” – cool. And then AI tells me this
“Under a long-term agreement (running until at least 2053), the AELTC passes on 90% of the profits (surplus) from the Wimbledon Championships to the LTA each year.”
So by losing the ballot every time Marcos Ortega is actually winning. As Marius says, he could try the queue with other tennis fans.
Clissold Park? Knowing Hackney, wonder how much of that money went into court resurfacing? Those shiny BMWs with the tinted windows don’t pay for themselves, you know.
Why not go to the warm up tournaments in Nottingham or Eastbourne? No queues, cheap seats, top players getting used to grass.
Good tip.
Marcos Ortega? Is he one of the Berkshire Ortegas? If so it explains how he feels able to lecture the English about the prices of attending our sporting events.
There is always going to be a problem when something is massively oversubscribed, when many more people want tickets than there are tickets available. There is a slightly similar thing with the London Marathon, you can buy your way in by chucking a hefty donation at an approved charity or you can enter the ballot. You can enter the ballot as an individual and entries are also allocated to running clubs.
I like to suggest the solution is auctioning off the tickets. People pick their own prices, so revealed preferences, and in theory scalping should be less profitable.
I’m also reminded of the quote from the great American economist Thomas Sowell: The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there’s never enough of a good to satisfy demand at a price people are willing to pay. The first lesson of politics is to ignore the first lesson of economics.
One can also gain an entry to the elite race by being a one-in-a-million athlete or, to the ordinary race, by being “good for your age”.
That one wasn’t really available to me, best time 4:20 in the 55-60 age group.
My point was that there were alternatives to slinging money at a charity on the approved list. Each time I did the London I got a place (one ballot, one place allocated to, then by, my employer, two “good for age”) then I ran for a charity. I reckoned that the vast majority of charity runners did the same.
I won the ballot and wifey got in via her running club in 2019.
Whah!
Try to get Masters tickets.
public courts in Clissold Park, north London.
It’s in Stoke Newington, ignorant twat central, What do you expect? People without an overweening sense of entitlement?
And capitalise the fucking N. North London is a name, a proper noun. What were you saying about ignorant twats?
Oh yes. Stoke N. The Vortex. A little bit of Hampstead marooned in N16
And a warning Norm. If you’ve kids & you take them to Clissold Park keep your eye on them near the lake. Those terrapins are not the cast of the Mutant Ninja Turtles. They’re vicious bastards take people’s fingers off.
Fortunately my kid is a doctor in Grimsby, BiS, and can look after herself now. And why the fuck would I go to Clissold Park? My back garden’s big enough for badminton. Job done.
Gamecock assumes there are tens of millions of Brits who don’t get the tickets. And they get over it. How did Guardian find this whiner? Why?
Is the story that there are rich people? Is it that tickets are expensive and hard to get? Which has what to do with ‘Marcos Ortega?’ Is this an appeal to pity? Why him? A big-titted guy in a tee shirt at a tennis court isn’t particularly sympathetic.
99.9% of their readers didn’t get them either. Is Ortega their newly crowned champion? A few thousand tickets, tens of millions of people . . . somebody ain’t getting in. So let’s put his picture in Guardian.
Forget it, Gc, it’s the Guardian.
Well played.