Wimbledon is for the people. It is prestigious tournament that is steeped in tradition. Name one Slam that offers tickets by public ballot. It does not matter how much money you have - everyone has an equal chance to win the public ballot. If you missed the public ballot, you go there early on the day like 2AM (or camp) and queue. By noon, you will reach the till and will be offered a ground ticket to get in. But you are not really queuing. Bring a mat. Sit down with your friends. When the queue moves, move your mat. There are toilets and plenty of food stalls in the queueing area. It is a fantastic atmosphere. If you haven't done it, I recommend that you do it. You will enjoy it. Lastly, if you have loads of ££, you can buy debenture tickets. If you are a member of a club, the club enters you into a public ballot. I have won public ballot numerous times. It is illegal to resell the tickets unless they are debenture tickets. The other slams want $$ on ticketmaster and they get sold out months before the event. People flog it on **** for ridiculous prices. So, I don't understand your expensive comment.
While I understand the perspective you're trying to illustrate, I don't think there is a case to be made that Wimbledon is "for the people." To the contrary, it is one of the most elitist events in Britain and the global sporting calendar - if, indeed, it is more a sporting than social event. It has a very selective ticket allocation program, a long association with British royalty, a very successful role in channeling global sporting capital, and a long history of social exclusion. Combined - and
very carefully cultivated as Philip Brook made brazenly clear in his Harvard Business School-sponsored dinner speech at the London Capital Club in 2017 - these elements constitute the image of "tradition" which ultimately is the AELTC/Wimbledon/The Championships brand.
First, the public ballot system is very problematic. It is continuously oversubscribed, at some moments in the past by as much as a factor of ten, and the ballot does not include the tickets which are reserved for the multiple corporate entities which buy debenture passes and other level tickets, nor the tennis clubs who have LTA registration and can request tickets using that status. Moreover, while it accounts for only a small percentage of overall tickets, there is the royal box and invitations to the "rich and famous" celebrities (David Beckham, Jackie Stewart, etc.). Wimbledon will, quite unsurprisingly, defend its image endlessly and the more it does so, the more the image of "tradition" and "prestige" is placed in the public eye. Additionally, the famous (infamous?) queue of people arriving and queuing at 2:00am, having to wait for hours while sitting on a public path/sidewalk, often in the rain and with tents, right outside the walls and fences of the AELTC serves the elitist image perfectly - it marks inside the club grounds as "special" and "for the deserving." Their brand, in part, depends (arguably even relies) on those who queue outside for it makes the club and tournament a space of "the privilege" of being inside.
Second, the AELTC has a long association with royalty, the British upper class, and Imperialism. King George V, as then Prince of Wales, was made President of the club in 1907, and other club presidents were educated at elite British schools such Herbert Wilberforce, and Louis Greig (plus others). In 1923, the niece of Wilberforce's doubles partner married the Duke of York, and by the 1930s it was very clear that the AELTC was proud of it's association with whiteness and imperialism. When John Crawford won the men's singles title in 1933, he was accepted not only because he was from a British territory, but because he had "on court dignity." It was clear, that when Fred Perry won the men's singles title the following year, the elitist reputation of the tournament and club was well-established across the world. When New Yorker columnist John Tunis became aware that Fred Perry's father was a trade unionist and Labour MP, he referred to Perry as "a poor boy without a varsity background" who was "unpopular" at Wimbledon because it was "the most snobbish centre of sport in the world." Without going over all the examples between the 1960s and 2000s, the same is still true, but is constructed carefully around "the new" royalty. The prime example of this is the role of Kate Middleton who, as a patron of the AELTC, and as the Duchess of Cambridge, is not presented as the old "royalty of inheritance" but as the new "royalty of achievement" - basically, the same socio-political mechanics with a different image.
Third, the AELTC and Wimbledon has a long history of social exclusion, even to the present day where there are clear systems of how attendance and participation is used to create ideas of "proper" and "improper" behavior. When Alan Mills joined the AELTC staff in 1977, he recalled how the professionalization of the game had ushered in "a different kind of animal [that] had come to stalk the court, and once the barriers of good conduct [were] broken down, this new breed...begun to stampede into the former bastion of civilised behaviour." Perhaps best embodied by John McEnroe, this new brashness was so offensive to the AELTC staff that some, like Bob Jenkins, called for special, harsher punishments for such behavior and even after winning the title in 1981, McEnroe was refused the offer of honorary AELTC membership.
Nonetheless, the AELTC knew that to not get "left behind" they had to adapt, and recoded the rules of "properness" in ways that were just as exclusionary but which still served their original purpose. For example, when Agassi boycotted Wimbledon over the dress code from 1988 to 1990, then AELTC President John Curry paid him a special visit to convince him to play, with Agassi later saying it was "special" to be back in the tournament. There were of course, historical exclusions along gender lines as well. Aside from the well-known issues such as pay, certain clothing rules for women served the inclusion/exclusion purpose - e.g. the catsuit worn by Anne White in 1985 which was banned for being "inappropriate" thereby clearly reinforcing the AELTC's ideas of what is "properly feminine." In the present, these methods still exist but are simply recoded and more nuanced. In 2005, the media were especially focused on the grunting of female players, with NBC even producing a short video on the issue which ended with a women sporting a large floppy summer hat stating that "Sharapova's grunting is appalling" in a very upper class English accent. In this example, the clothing of women was still a mark of "properness" - but rather than the focus being on the player, the focus was on the audience - specifically, how the women's clothing marked her as a "Wimbledon insider" and therefore "qualified" to speak on "the properness" of behavior.
Ultimately, by accepting professionalism, but altering the mediums and visibility through which their elitism could be maintained, the AELTC have been enormously successful in marketing their elitism as a brand of "tradition." The club specially headhunted a marketing director in 1985, in 1989 they hired a special TV marketing director, and then recruited an IT specialist marketing director in 1995. In doing, they aimed for an image of purity - something which they argue prevents what their internal marketing documents refer to as "ambush marketing" - the idea that no commercial sponsorship is allowed inside their grounds unless it is inline with what they call "the key objective...to enhance the unique character and image of The Championships as...tennis in an English garden." In terms of how this marketing channels global capital, the goal has always been keep the exclusivity of British tennis. From all their income, between 1995 and 2005 records show they paid the LTA £292m - yet the national participation in the sport remains largely unchanged (despite Andy Murray's high profile) and LTA-developed British players have had minimal impact on the ATP and WTA tours.
Ultimately, the AELTC and Wimbledon have a long and still-standing elitism which has been very carefully repackaged to create a highly marketable brand. In my own view, this means Wimbledon will continue to have longevity; it's proven time and again that it can adapt elitist views into a very cleverly packaged image. Therefore, any temporary dip in the quality of the tennis will likely not be an issue primarily because, as the above hopefully shows, Wimbledon is more a social event built on elitism, than a sporting event historically built on meritocracy.