BBC’s great Wimbledon freebie fest
It hands out hundreds of tickets to guests including Gary Lineker’s agent and Tom Watson’s spin doctor
THE BBC handed out hundreds of ‘freebie’ Wimbledon tickets to guests including Labour deputy leader Tom Watson’s spin doctor and Gary Lineker’s agent, it has been revealed.
They were among 393 tickets given out by the broadcaster across the 13 days of the 2019 Championships to guests and high-earning staff. The free tickets included Centre Court seats for the Men’s and Women’s Finals.
Mr Watson’s aide Danny Adilypour, a Labour Councillor in Lambeth, South London, was invited with a partner to watch day four
Free pass for executive on £370,000 a year
of the Championships from prized Centre Court seats.
Multi- millionaire sports agent Jon Holmes, who acts for Match Of The Day presenter Lineker, the BBC’s highest-earning star on £1.75 million a year, was given complimentary Centre Court tickets with a partner for day five.
All of the named BBC staff attending earned many times the average UK salary of £29,500, so could well afford to buy their own tickets.
The highest paid was the BBC’s director of content Charlotte Moore, who has a salary of about £ 370,000 a year. Chief financial officer Glyn Isherwood, on £325,000 a year, also got to go, as did BBC group commercial director Bal Samra, who earns the same.
Several key figures in BBC News also received free tickets, including £175,000-a-year head of newsgathering Jonathan Munro and Sam Taylor, the curiously titled ‘Head of Live and Breaking’.
The Corporation claimed the tickets were ‘an opportunity to discuss business’, but declined to tell The Mail on Sunday if the ‘business’ was discussed during rallies, between points or after matches.
As diehard ordinary fans queued overnight to catch a glimpse of their tennis heroes, the lucky few on the freeloaders’ list breezed past the crowds to their seats on Centre Court or No 1 Court every single day of the event.
Jamie Njoku, special adviser or ‘ spad’ to Health Secretary Matt Hancock, was given Centre Court tickets on day four of the Championships along with a partner.
Apart f rom t he Corporation bigwigs, many of them lawyers, another ten presumably less senior, BBC staff were given tickets as a reward for ‘excellence at work’ while a much larger unnamed number were ‘allocated’ tickets in return for a donation to charity – usually Sport Relief. On average, a ticket for a men’s semi-final has a face value of about £60. A ticket for the final has a face value of around £210, but the tickets are so soughtafter that some were reported to be on sale for this year’s final between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer for as much as £13,000.
Among other lucky recipients were executives from TV company Nickelodeon and Premier League clubs Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester City, Manchester United and Arsenal. A BBC spokesman said: ‘As is standard practice, the BBC uses some of its complimentary tickets for business purposes – at no cost to the licence-fee payer.
‘We don’t provide hospitality and they are used as an opportunity to discuss business or to demonstrate first-hand one of the biggest events BBC Sport delivers.’