LONDON — (AP) — It might just be the best deal in all of major professional sports: Tennis fans can get a chance to watch stars such as Carlos Alcaraz compete on Centre Court at Wimbledon by forking over just 15 pounds — about $20 at the current exchange rate.
That's instead of Friday's price of nearly $220 for the best seats at the grass-court Grand Slam tournament's biggest stadium. Face value there rises as the event goes on, hitting nearly $370 by the end of Week 2, then going up again for the singles finals.
The secret to saving so much cash? The official resale service. It allows anyone already on-site with a ticket to sign up via the Wimbledon app for a daily lottery to get into one of the top three courts at a cut rate, including about $13 each for No. 1 Court or No. 2 Court.
Those spots are offered up to the All England Club by spectators who leave before play ends.
“It’s an elite tournament in terms of the players, but it’s not elite to get in, which is part of the appeal,” said Ed Hogan, a retired 69-year-old from Reading, which is a little more than an hour west of Wimbledon. “The concept of resales is great. It’s recycling at its best — sharing the joy.”
The All England Club wouldn’t say how many tickets get resold.
“We’re selling the same ticket twice,” said the club's operations manager, Michelle Dite, “and the primary reason is to make tennis as accessible to as many people as possible.”
Money from resales goes to charities via the Wimbledon Foundation. Nearly $80,000 was raised through the first three days of this year’s tournament; last year’s total was about $300,000.
Wimbledon has done resales since 1954, but until last year, folks hoping to take advantage of the deal needed to stand in a line once they were on-site, hope they were there soon enough — and hope enough tickets were returned.
Now, though, that “line” is virtual.
Here's how it works:
After opting in on the app and getting their phone scanned by 2:30 p.m. at kiosks on-site or near the Wimbledon Queue, where thousands of people camp out at a local park for up to 24 hours in hopes of getting full-price tickets for main courts or grounds passes for smaller ones, fans then wait for a text message giving the good news that they were one of the lucky ones chosen for the resale, which runs from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m.
They have 10 minutes to confirm they still want a used ticket for the rest of the day, and another 20 minutes to get themselves to the green-and-brown ticket resale booth behind No. 1 Court to show the QR code that lets them pay for the cheap tickets.
“You’re not stuck in one place forever," said Henry Thompson, 38, a high school math teacher from Missouri. “This is much more efficient. Took 30 seconds. Much better.”
Thompson, who was wearing a blue hat with the Wimbledon logo, really wanted to see 10th-seeded American Ben Shelton, so he entered the resale lottery and was able to get a seat for No. 2 Court for $13 instead of $115.
“It's beneficial to the sport to give people access to those courts for a reasonable price,” said Marcos Giron, a 45th-ranked American who won first-round matches in singles and doubles this week. “It's a wonderful thing.”
Chen Pinjung, who just finished medical school in Taiwan, waited in the queue for six hours, paid 30 pounds ($40) there for a grounds pass, then also got herself into No. 1 Court via a resale for an additional $13 — instead of the $150 it could have cost to see 2022 Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina win there Thursday.
“If everybody knew how that works, I'm sure everybody would apply,” said Rafael Garcia, who was with his girlfriend, Diana Meneses, and her brother, Gustavo Meneses. “We saw that (resale) office last year, but we didn't know how to do it. Now we will.”
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Howard Fendrich has been the AP's tennis writer since 2002. Find his stories here: https://apnews.com/author/howard-fendrich. More AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis
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