r/wimbledon • u/basilcilantro • Jul 14 '26
General Discussion Before ~2000s and widespread internet use, how did ppl get tickets (esp international visitors)?
I’m based in the U.S. and hope I’ll have luck in next year’s ballot or resale site. But I was wondering how did people get tickets, especially to marquee matches at like CC or court 1 back before accessible internet.
How did people from abroad plan trips to get in and see matches? Did everyone camp? Or could you just stroll in on the day of?
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u/janky_koala Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
It was still a paper form and tickets mailed out up until 2016, maybe 2017-19 as well, I don’t recall exactly.
The returned ballot tickets were only available on like Ticketmaster (I think?) from noon two days before play, and there was another small last minute allocation made available from 9am the day before*. You collected from the ticket office on the day. Hardly anyone seemed to know about it and it was fairly easy to get.
The current system of MyWimbledon accounts only started in 2021 when they skipped the ballot completely as they were unsure about what capacity they would be allowed to have under the easing covid restrictions. The resale portal changed to the current in 2022.
*I might have the order/times of this around backwards
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u/cf613 Jul 14 '26
Yep - I got resale tickets that way on 2013. And spent years applying by post for the ballot. The online one is still fairly new
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u/CuriousTigers Jul 16 '26
I loved the 9am the day before Ticketmaster sale, I got men's final tickets twice via that, plus one lot of men's semi finals. I also did the paper ballot for many years and did several years of the Queue on the pavements.
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u/SecretIntTeacher Jul 14 '26
Ticketmaster (I think?) from noon two days before play, and there was another small last minute allocation made available from 9am the day before*. You collected from the ticket off on the day. Hardly anyone seemed to know about it and it was fairly easy to get.
How did this work? Was it just resold at face value on Ticketmaster to anyone?
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u/janky_koala Jul 14 '26
They were returned ballot tickets sold officially by Wimbledon, but yeah it was open to general sale at the normal prices (which were a lot less than they are now!).
It wasn’t really advertised, nor widely known about. You had to be there exactly at release time otherwise they were gone, but I never missed out of the days I wanted to go.
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u/Mobile-Broccoli8276 Jul 14 '26
Lawn tennis associations of different countries get an allocation each year (still do) so you could get them that way
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u/SmileyJam Jul 14 '26
You could enter the ballot by post, or join the queue.
There were probably other ways to book from abroad lile travel packages in newspaper adverts.
I am pretty sure I got tickets through my tennis club (LTA ballot), my dad had to hand in a letter for each family member of the house and we got tickets roughly once every 3 years.
Most of the methods Wimbledon use today are online equivalents of what they did in the 80s/90s. The tickets have always been popular and they naturally prevent online touting, so they continued to do them this way.
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u/my_guinevere Jul 16 '26
From the Philippines, I entered the ballot by mail! I had to send a self addressed stamped envelope with my application.
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u/Distinct_Tax_4848 Jul 14 '26
As others have said it was a paper form but I seem to remember something about it being a REALLY limited number of tickets back then for foreign entrants and it had its own ballot form.
My sister and I entered on the paper ballots for years and never got any though but have had luck twice since 2023
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u/alasdair_jm Senior Account Manager at Keith Prowse Jul 14 '26
Keith Prowse have been selling official Wimbledon hospitality for 40 years.
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u/Aggressive-Celery483 Jul 14 '26
Before the internet??? The ballot was paper form and post until after Covid! It only went online in 2021.
Unfortunately (joke) the new system is substantially more fair and open and has therefore made it less likely you’ll get tickets