£ 174 million reimbursement: Wimbledon and the insurance coup
According to British media reports, the special clause in insurance should pay off particularly well for the organizers of Wimbledon. Allegedly a reimbursement of £ 174 million will be claimed for the cancellation of this year's event.
by Michael Rothschädl
last edit: Nov 14, 2020, 09:29 pm
As is well known, the Grand Slam at the All England Club, Major Wimbledon, was the only event in this category to fall victim to the rampant COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. While it was still possible to play in Australia at the start of the year without any problems and the US Open marked the restart of the ATP tour with a rigorous safety concept, the organizers of the French Open decided to postpone it to a later date in September. A shift that would have been unthinkable for the classic lawn in London due to the weather conditions.
It was therefore all the more important for the organizers that a special clause for pandemics was found in their default insurance, which, according to media reports, should hit around 1.5 million pounds annually. A clause that does not exist in the insurance of the other major events. This should now pay off in particular, while the organizers had originally assumed default payments of around 100 million pounds, the insurance is now supposed to reimburse 174 million euros. This was reported by the British Daily Mail , citing the sports medium Sportsmail .
The fee to the Lawn Tennis Association is almost the same
Accordingly, the All England Club's donation to British sport should be correspondingly high, despite the cancellation. This is done through annual donations through the Lawn Tennis Association. According to reports, this will be only marginally lower in 2020 at £ 36million compared to £ 45million last year. And that without staging the traditional lawn tournament, which could not take place for the first time since World War II.
The next entry in the Grand Slam calendar is now the Australian Open. The tournament in Melbourne is currently still struggling with the state's restrictive entry restrictions, which require all immigrants to be quarantined for around two weeks, but will definitely take place, as tournament director Craig Tiley also made clear. Players like last year's finalist Dominic Thiem will therefore travel to Down Under in mid-December to do their season preparation there. In 2021, the Wimbledon Grand Slam will take place again. What restrictions cannot be estimated at this point in time.