LONDON: Wimbledon, the world’s oldest tennis championship, is embracing new technology with an iPad app to appeal to a younger audience.
The app allows users to navigate around the grounds via a photographic map, zooming in on specific courts to get updates on the state of play. They can also get alerts telling them how their favourite players are faring.
The All England Club (AELTC), which stages the tournament on the grass courts of suburban London, is in the position of knowing that demand for tickets far outstrips supply.
But with so many people unable to get tickets, the tournament’s online presence has brought it closer to fans around the world, AELTC Commercial Director Mick Desmond said.
“If you can’t come to Wimbledon, we want to try to make it the next best experience,” he said.
“We try to position Wimbledon as tennis in an English garden but at the same time we want to be at the cutting edge of innovation,” he added, speaking before the start of the tournament on Monday.
“It’s allowing us to reach a younger audience.”
Desmond, a former television executive who joined the AELTC three years ago, said making Wimbledon more accessible online helped to increase its appeal to sponsors and broadcasters.
The launch of the free iPad app follows a push into mobile in 2011 and an overhaul last year of the main Wimbledon website (http://www.wimbledon.com). The site attracted 17 million users in 2012.
Online features include Live@Wimbledon TV, fronted by former players Annabel Croft and Mats Wilander, which offers seven hours a day of video coverage.
The channel shows individual games but does not provide live streaming of whole matches to avoid undercutting the value of rights sold to broadcasters like the BBC in Britain and ESPN in the United States. It redirects users to the relevant broadcaster if they want full coverage of a particular match. REUTERS
