In conversation with Sally Bolton OBE

Ahead of The Championships, Wimbledon, of which Barclays is the proud Official Banking Partner, we spoke to the Chief Executive tasked with modernising a prestigious event that’s loved as much for its heritage and traditions, as it is for its on-court action. 

In the sporting world, finding a way to modernise while maintaining traditional values requires a delicate touch. What makes an event great can sometimes be lost amid the race to keep up and maximise revenues. The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, to give it its full name, has always prided itself on its ability to manage these two seemingly polar opposites, and Wimbledon now stands proudly as one of the biggest, most recognisable sporting events on the planet.     

Sally Bolton OBE is the woman whose job it is to make the magic happen. Bolton became the Chief Executive of the All England Club in 2020 and has set about building on the progress of her predecessors and enhancing The Championships to embrace the modern world.

“I want to finish some things that were started before I joined,” Bolton says. “There are some things I want to have delivered start to finish. And some things I want to have started and put some good, possibly literal foundations in to enable my successor to take forward and future boards and executives."

Bolton took over from Richard Lewis CBE, whose eight-year reign saw Wimbledon build a roof on No.1 Court to accompany the one over Centre Court, vast increases in prize money for players at The Championships, and also the acquisition of the Wimbledon Park Golf Club, situated across the road from the All England Club, which it hopes to use to expand and enhance The Championships.

Fine lines

The proposed development of the golf course represents perhaps Bolton’s biggest challenge. After opposition from some local residents, the plans, which include more than 30 new grass courts and an 8,000-seater Show Court, are now with the Mayor of London’s office and a decision is expected this summer. It's been a protracted experience but as Bolton points out, “we’re also proposing to set aside 27 acres of land, which will significantly increase publicly accessible green space for Londoners, with 23 acres to the south of the site and four acres to the north.”

She continues, “That balance of doing what's right for the future, (for) The Championships, to protect our pinnacle position and to keep evolving and growing and developing is very importantly balanced with how we can give back to our local community."

Treading that fine line between modernisation and tradition runs through every element of her job, with the emphasis on evolution rather than revolution. Bolton points to the recent change to the strict all-white clothing rule, allowing women to wear dark or coloured under-shorts to enable them to feel as comfortable on court as possible. Or the Wimbledon Queue, another example of soft change.

“The tradition of the Queue is not the tradition of people standing in a line, that's not the bit we're protecting,” she says. “The tradition of the Queue is the accessibility of Wimbledon and that if you've got the tenacity, you can stand in a queue and get a ticket on the day. There aren't any other major events of our size that offer that opportunity. So if I think about the tradition I'm trying to protect, it's the ability to access the ticket on the day, it's not standing in a line. Because in 20 years from now, people won't be standing in a line in the same way. But we will be protecting the heart of that tradition.

“It’s about really figuring out which is the part that is critical, versus which is the bit that that's the way we've always done it," she says. "Getting fresh blood into the organisation really helps, because those people will come and say, well, just talk to me again, about why exactly we do it that way.”

A new era

One of two daughters to a sports-loving father, Bolton came to tennis from rugby league, via athletics. While some people encouraged her on the way up, others were less friendly. “Pretty early on in my career, the people who said things weren't possible were often the ones that inspired me to get on to do it, to prove it was possible,” she says. “Back then, nearly 30 years ago, the industry wasn't really very diverse, and the types of jobs weren't very diverse either. I came out of university with a business degree, with a major in public relations, so trying to find a spot when you have that background didn't seem obvious. I think my motivation was often where it didn't seem like it was possible to do something, I was always quite keen to get in and find out if that was true.”

One of the things Bolton is most proud of is the way Wimbledon has offered so many important roles to women. In 2023, Deborah Jevans CBE became the first woman to be appointed Chair and this year will be Denise Parnell’s first as The Championships’ referee. “As a senior female in this sector, I recognise that part of my job is being visible in this role so that women and young girls coming through, if they can see it, they can believe that it's possible,” she says. “I think about the All England Club and the way in which the trophy presentation will look this year; we have a new female chair, we have a female chief executive, our referee this year is a female for the first time. So that's a real statement of the evolution of sport, generally, but the evolution of the All England Club too; you can see it's possible because it is.”

Investing in the future

In addition to hosting The Championships, Wimbledon also has a unique role in its contribution to tennis in Britain. Every year, the surplus from The Championships (in 2023 it totalled £48.8 million) is given to the Lawn Tennis Association, which invests that money into driving participation and making tennis accessible to everyone. It’s a role that the other Grand Slams, who control participation alongside running their event, are understandably envious of. “We all know about the peaks in people picking up a racquet and heading off down to the park during the two weeks of Wimbledon,” Bolton says. “So we're hugely proud, albeit it's not our job to look after performance and participation, we're really proud of the role that we play in investing into that.”

For many people in Britain, tennis still means the two weeks of Wimbledon. For Bolton and everyone behind the scenes, it’s a year-round job. Bolton doesn’t mind the misconception. In fact, she rather likes it. 

“I think people assume you've got your feet up, which actually is OK because what that comes from is the sense that The Championships happen by magic,” she says. “And that's actually a good thing. Because a bit like the Wizard of Oz, if you could see behind the curtain of all the blood, sweat and tears it takes to deliver those two weeks, it would lose something. So if people think that we sort of pop up a couple of weeks before and make it happen, I'm really happy with that.”

Bolton talks of Wimbledon’s quest for perfection but is also keenly aware that it needs to be as open and accessible as possible. “We have a fantastic Work at Wimbledon initiative, where we work with a number of local charities on local people who are facing challenges and barriers to employment,” Bolton says. “And we help them to get the confidence to apply and then support them through that process. In 2023, we had just over 40 people working with us at The Championships, across 11 different roles, who would otherwise perhaps have found it very challenging to get into employment. 

“Thinking about our Set for Success Programme, which is through the Wimbledon Foundation and supported by Barclays, we’re very much focused on kids who might be at risk of exclusion from school and supporting them with athlete mentors to give them the skills that they need to really succeed. It's about ensuring that Wimbledon is welcoming in the broadest possible sense, and really supporting people to believe that they've got an opportunity to be part of what Wimbledon is.”

Values and reputation

The future for Wimbledon seems rosy but Bolton’s not resting on her laurels. The competition for eyeballs is hotter than ever, while a younger generation, with shorter attention spans, offers an ever-growing challenge. Tennis, she says, is a thriving sport and when she’s finished in the job, she wants to look back and know she’s done everything she can to keep Wimbledon in its rightful place. 

“It’s about maintaining the values and the reputation of the organisation,” she says. “It's about making sure that we've got growing audiences, making sure that our facilities are continuing to evolve and grow and develop to support the very many users. But I think most of all, the ingredients that go into making us more open and accessible and retaining that position at the pinnacle of the sport will probably be the things that I hope I'm most proud of when I look back.”

Image credit: AELTC_Florian Eisele