It may seem a little tenuous to draw a link between Wimbledon and gold, but it doesn’t hurt to shine a little gold light on the most famous tennis tournament of all time.
Whilst the Olympics was all about the medals, and how much gold was really in a ‘gold’ medal, at Wimbledon we like to focus on the more refined things in life… like strawberries… and the huge pot of winnings at the end of each match.
Thank goodness it isn’t the Olympics at the moment, the bad press the gold price is receiving may even see some Olympians hand their medals back. But really, when you look at gold in relation to strawberries and the Wimbledon prize fund, you begin to see that perhaps it isn’t gold investors who are feeling bruised it’s those Wimbledon spectators and players who are being fobbed off with high strawberry prices and so-called increased prize funds.
Did those strawberry punnets feel a little expensive this year?
Well, if you owned gold ounces then those red berries would be feeling exceptionally cheap! Had you decided to spend your gold ounces on some strawberries you now be able to buy double the amount this year than you could over 20 years ago, yet in cash terms everything’s going up.
Each year 28,000kg of strawberries are consumed at Wimbledon, each strawberry is sold for approximately 25p each or just under 1p per gram. You would need 26,000 strawberries to pay for one gram of gold.
Whilst 28 tonnes of strawberries sounds like a huge amount, it’s exceptionally small when compared to gold reserves. In fact just 28 tonnes is what both Iraq and Ecuador hold in gold reserves.
Win that pot of gold
In the last five years the total prize fund has increased by over 80%, from £12.5 million to £22.5 million. But in true illustration that the money is worth less than it was then, the equivalent prize fund in gold ounces has fallen by nearly 18%.
Those competing for the ultimate title, Champion of Wimbledon, haven’t seen anywhere near an 80% increase in winnings, having only increased the winner’s prize money from £850,000 to £1.6 million since 2009. But in gold ounces they are certainly faring better than the overall prize pot as in the last five years the Wimbledon winner’s gold pot has fallen by 14%, 4% less than total prize funds.
Imagine if players were rewarded in gold ounces.
Well, come to think of it, back in the early days of the tournament they effectively were as gold backed the money supply. So when the prize winnings increased, so did the amount of gold.
However, given the huge disconnect between gold and cash, the increased money pot is an illusion and in fact buys increasingly less each year.
Let’s not forget the rain
Of course, with Wimbledon comes rain.
In the UK, we’re always ready for rain, but when it comes to Wimbledon it can be just plain annoying. So imagine everyone’s delight when the fantastic retractable roof appeared on Centre Court in 2009. They could have saved themselves some money and instead protected the court from rain with 7,500 Wimbledon umbrellas, but that would be impractical.
But we have to ask if they considered using 2,517 London good delivery bars instead? Surely it would have done just as good a job, even if costing eight times more at over £800m!
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