Wimbledon's key numbers

Federer for five in a row? Too obvious. Women to get equal prize money? Interesting, but too late. (I've dealt with that before - they shouldn't, but it's complicated).

The numbers the Guardian is interested in is still a perennial. Where does all the money go?

David Conn looks at the some of the numbers, and there's an underlying discontent in the fact that debentures fund the championships' redevelopment of courts and so on. Referring to debenture seats, he notes:

A total of 2,300 were sold, raising £46m and occupying 16% of the seats, with a further 8% reserved for corporate hospitality packages. Ritchie defends the championships from accusations of exclusivity...

I presume his argument is that "real" fans don't buy debentures. Nothing could be further from the truth. Many debenture tickets are owned by real fans. Just not all, and it upsets many debenture holders when the corporate non-fans ruin it for everyone else.

Anyway, those numbers in the Guardian:

£25,544,765
Surplus made by Wimbledon in 2006

£11,282,710
Total prize money this year

3,100,000
People expected to play tennis at least once this year

500,000
People expected to keep playing regularly

£23,150
Cost of a Centre Court debenture for one seat for 2006-2010

18,000
Tennis courts in the UK, mostly 'in a state of disrepair', according to the LTA's own report

If this seems so bad, think about the number of people who join a gym and then stop going. And the amount of money in football academies.

A little perspective on tennis is needed. Better public courts are needed, but it's a cultural shift that is required as much as the money. Tennis is not seen as a sport to get out of poverty, like it is in some European countries, and was for the Williams sisters. It's still a middle-class hobby in the UK, so the urgency just isn't there. The numbers quoted by the Guardian only tell half the story.

Henry on his way

As Arsenal have sold Thierry Henry, many papers mention his scoring record of 226 goals in 369 matches for the club, including 42 in 84 in Europe. His style of play gets the headlines, but his scoring rate is hugely impressive - he also has 40 goals for France in 92 matches. These stack up against any comparitive player you choose. For example, Alan Shearer scored more Premiership goals (260), but in more matches (441) - a rate of 0.58 compared to Henry's 174 in 254 - 0.68 goals per game.

Henry cost £10.5m from Juventus in 1999, and is being sold at 29 for £16m - an impressive return. Arsene Wenger has a knack of pulling off brilliant deals. Nicolas Anelka cost £0.5m in 1996, and was sold 3 years later to Real Madrid for £22.3m.

Whatever happens, the stats show that Henry is a great player who will be missed, but Wenger is a shrewd manager who knows a good bit of business when he sees it.

Clocking up the miles with Beckham and the Ren sisters

(c) The Guardain. Click for full size image.

David Beckham looks likely to pull off the strange feat of playing for LA Galaxy AND England. If so, his itinerary next season is pretty full, and involves a lot of flying. The guardian did a nice graphic to show this alongside a story that Alexi Lalas of LA Galaxy would "drive him to the airport". Here it is.



50,302 miles. Sounds a lot, right? That's some carbon footprint right there. But then another story caught my eye. Another sport, different situation, but the Ren sisters may well be the next big thing in tennis, if their potential is fulfilled. In this interesting piece in the Telegraph that compares them to the Williams sisters, it states that "the girls require 30,000 miles of chauffeuring each year just to get to training and tournaments".

Beckham - 50,000 miles.
Two girls on the junior tennis circuit - 30,000 miles. And you can bet that it's not first class travel plus entourage.

England and the Champions League

The Guardian picked up on an interesting data story yesterday, highlighting the research by the financial advisors Grant Thornton that only 16 English players have appeared in the Champions League final in its 15 year history. Not enough, you might think, but then only 3 English clubs have got to the final (ManU 1999, Liverpool 2005, 2007, Arsenal 2006). What this research really points out is that English players don't "travel". Very few of our top players move to clubs abroad, and Premiership clubs are cash-rich so can import players from all over the world.

If you look at the French team, almost all of their players are in foreign leagues. However, in the last World Cup, Italy had a squad 100% based in their domestic league. Even England had Beckham (Real Madrid) and Hargreaves (Bayern Munich) playing abroad. And Italian clubs and players have dominated the Champions League

Here's the table:

Top ten countries who have supplied the most players in Champions League finals             
              No. of finalists   % of overall    total Population
1    Italy     90                 21.95%          58.15m
2    Spain     56                 13.66%          40.45m
3    France    41                 10%             63.71m
=    Germany   41                 10%             82.4m
5    Holland   36                 8.78%           16.57m
6    Brazil    24                 5.85%           190.01m
7    England   16                 3.90%           50.43m
8    Portugal  15                 3.66%           10.64m
=    Argentina 15                 3.66%           40.30m
10   Croatia   9                  2.20%           4.49m
Source: Grant Thornton, CIA World Factbook

Lesson: buy Italian players. Or an Italian club.

FinkTank

I've run a bit of number crunching on that Time Fink Tank piece. You can read it here.

Interestingly, one comment made on the Times website points out exactly one of the anomalies highlighted by my work.

Have the authors checked whether the scores for all the team members together are consistent with the team’s position in the league? For example, Bolton were seventh in the league but their top two players are ranked 64th and 134th. That doesn’t sound like it tallies to me. Something like that might give a cross check to the validity of the approach.

Keith, Dubai

Exactly.

Serbian tennis - the new BIG thing

So. You look at the French Open draw, and think - aside from Federer-Nadal, where are the other contenders coming from? Answer: Serbia.

The semis draw is:
Roger Federer SUI (1)
vs
Nikolay Davydenko RUS (4)

Novak Djokovic SRB (6)
vs
Rafael Nadal ESP (2)

and in the women:


Justine Henin BEL (1)
vs
Jelena Jankovic SRB (4)

Ana Ivanovic SRB (7)
vs.
Maria Sharapova RUS (2)

Let's be honest - no-one is seriously considering an all-Serbian trophy haul, or anything other than a Fed-Nad final. But it's interesting how some countries catch the tennis vibe, and people talk of a wave of players. Not long ago it was the Spanish men. Then the Russian women. I'm going to take a closer look at some of the data on this, but my instinct is that there is no formula as such. It's a mixture of training partners coming to the boil at the same time, supporting each other, and a whole lot of luck.