This year’s Championships were as popular as ever with over 470,000 coming to the All England Club and a worldwide audience of approximately 1.8 billion receiving some of the 5000 hours of Championships coverage.

In the UK, British player Tim Henman’s fourth round match with David Nalbandian of Argentina on Monday 30 June generated the highest viewing audience of 12.7 million.

The final crowd figure was 470,802 which includes two new day records of 41,929 (Tuesday 24 June) and 41,967 (Thursday 26 June), which is the second highest in The Championships’ history (last year’s figure of 469,514 was the previous second highest). Some 60,000 visitors from overseas were again attracted to the event.

Entertaining

In addition to witnessing magnificent action and drama from the world’s top tennis players, those attending The Championships also enjoyed other tennis activities, including plenty for children to do at the Kids’ Zone.

On middle Saturday, the All England Club’s Wimbledon Junior Tennis Initiative squad of 7-14 year-olds under coach Dan Bloxham entertained spectators on Court 14, while Centre, No.1 Court and Court 3 crowds watched a demonstration by the girls and boys of The Lawn Tennis Association’s Champions of the Future programme.

On both Saturday and Sunday of the Finals’ weekend, Wimbledon again welcomed some of the world’s top wheelchair tennis players. These hugely skilful players provided a packed Court 14 with some great play before and after the Ladies’ Singles Final, and before the Men’s Singles Final.

Throughout the fortnight, staff at the Kids’ Zone staff were kept busy by 5700 children getting to grips with activities such as Target, Rebound Net and Speed of Serve. The Speed of Serve will have raised more than £6000 for the charity CRY (Cardiac Research in the Young).

Added interest was generated as spectators found themselves taking part as extras in a number of scenes being filmed by actors Kirsten Dunst and Paul Bettany for the forthcoming film Wimbledon.

Official Wimbledon website

Over 4 million unique users logged onto the Wimbledon Website, www.wimbledon.org during The Championships. They visited the site over 27 million times and stayed for an average of two hours and ten minutes.

New features this year included the Event Ticker, showing the latest news of all the action and the Live Match Report, giving full details of the matches as they unfold. This has been launched over 1 million times.

All England Club’s partnership with the BBC to continue

On Friday 4 July the All England Club and the BBC jointly announced that their long standing partnership will continue for a further five years. The new agreement covers the 2005-2009 Championships inclusive.