Wimbledon Debentures Soar in Value Ahead of Sale, Guardian Says

(Bloomberg) -- Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal aren’t the only people set to make big gains on Wimbledon’s illustrious Centre Court this year.

On Thursday, the arena’s 2,520 five-year season passes, called debentures, will go on sale for an estimated 100,000 pounds ($132,090) each, the Guardian newspaper reported Saturday. They grant access to every match on the tennis club’s famous court from 2021 to 2025. The sale for 2015-2020 debentures netted 50,000 pounds each, the Guardian said.

There are no limits on their re-sale, so a busy and lucrative market has formed to trade them. Passes have nearly tripled their face value just a year after purchase, the paper cites Numis Corporation Plc stockbroker Tim Webb as saying. Numis is aiming to hold weekly auctions for the passes, according to its website.

The upcoming sale is expected to produce as much as 250 million pounds for the prestigious All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in south London, which hosts the Wimbledon Grand Slam tournament, the Guardian reported. The tickets account for nearly a fifth of the court’s roughly 15,000 seats.

Existing debenture holders get the first right to buy from the upcoming release and often hand them down generation to generation, investment officer Alan Higgins, from private bank Coutts & Co., told the newspaper. The debenture system started 99 years ago to raise funds for the construction of the famous Centre Court.

To contact the reporter on this story: Thomas Seal in London at tseal@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rebecca Penty at rpenty@bloomberg.net, Steve Geimann, James Amott

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