{"id":36032,"date":"2026-10-10T13:16:51","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T13:16:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wimbledon-boss-jokes-royal-marines-would-love-to-sort-out-disruptive-influencers\/"},"modified":"2026-10-10T13:16:51","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T13:16:51","slug":"wimbledon-boss-jokes-royal-marines-would-love-to-sort-out-disruptive-influencers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wimbledon-boss-jokes-royal-marines-would-love-to-sort-out-disruptive-influencers\/","title":{"rendered":"Wimbledon boss jokes Royal Marines would &#8216;love to sort out&#8217; disruptive influencers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b>Royal Marine commandos providing security at Wimbledon would like &#8220;nothing more than to sort out&#8221; disruptive social media influencers at the prestigious tournament, its chief executive has joked.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">US Open organisers <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/tennis\/articles\/cy8zqd4zg14o\" class=\"ssrcss-1fqyhkk-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">accredited 100 influencers and content creators<\/a> for this year&#8217;s tournament.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But when a match involving two-time champion Naomi Osaka was disrupted by a group of influencers conducting a photo shoot, it prompted a debate about tennis etiquette.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Richard Atkinson, interim chief executive at the All England Lawn Tennis Club, said Wimbledon did not offer accreditation to influencers and sources have indicated to BBC Sport that is unlikely to change in the near future.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">While Atkinson acknowledged that influencers were a &#8220;crucial part of the marketing mix&#8221; and to ban them from attending the tournament entirely would be &#8220;nonsense&#8221;, he said any that were brought in by brands would be &#8220;tightly chaperoned&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He also backed the traditional &#8220;self-policing&#8221; ethos at SW19, whereby fans respect the action.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">After the disruption at the US Open, world number four Coco Gauff said it was important to welcome a &#8220;new demographic&#8221; to the sport, but said: &#8220;I think it&#8217;s just, follow the etiquette of the sport. That&#8217;s all.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">And Wimbledon&#8217;s boss made it clear he does not expect to see a repeat at the All England Club.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We don&#8217;t have a category of accredited people called influencers,&#8221; Atkinson told a panel at Leaders Week London.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;That said, clearly influencers are a crucial part of building your brand around the world in the third decade of the 21st century.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;What you have to do is keep them under control. One of our big partners, Polo Ralph Lauren, will have their influencer, but they are all tightly chaperoned.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said the atmosphere at the US Open is &#8220;very New York City&#8221;, adding: &#8220;It&#8217;s dead easy for someone who has just bought a ticket to show up there with their ring lights and literally start broadcasting in the middle of a match.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;If you tried to do that at Wimbledon, I think you&#8217;d probably have some Royal Marine Commando\u2026&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He then joked: &#8220;We do have military. And they would like nothing more, I suspect, than to sort out some influencer.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Fans will also not be allowed to bring portable ring lights &#8211; a piece of equipment used by content creators &#8211; to SW19.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Atkinson did, however, point out that the media landscape has changed, and suggested there is a place for embracing influencers and content creators to ensure Wimbledon remains relevant.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s just a crucial bit of the marketing mix, of course it is,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We&#8217;re not in the world of newspapers and television anymore, right? The world has changed. But it&#8217;s just really important, it&#8217;s a bit of a cliched expression, you&#8217;ve got to sort it out in a Wimbledon way. But to say &#8220;we&#8217;re not going to have any influencers at Wimbledon&#8221;, it&#8217;s obviously nonsense.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Our marketing team work meticulously to make sure they are working in a way that is consistent with our Wimbledon brand and keeps that magic that I was referring to earlier.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/tennis\/articles\/crly0n5j79n5o?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Royal Marine commandos providing security at Wimbledon would like &#8220;nothing more than to sort out&#8221; disruptive social media influencers at the prestigious tournament, its chief executive has joked. US Open organisers accredited 100 influencers and content creators for this year&#8217;s tournament. But when a match involving two-time champion Naomi Osaka was disrupted by a group [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36033,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36032"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36034,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36032\/revisions\/36034"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}