More than 100 protesters grouped together outside the All England Lawn Tennis Club during opening day of Wimbledon. The group was targeting Barclays’ sponsorship of the Grand Slam.
The protesters put spoof ads over billboards and bus station ads around the area. One of them read: “From Gaza to global warming, we’re making a killing.”
Serving strawberries at Wimbledon has been a tradition since the tournament started, and protesters had plates of the fruit on Monday. They were covered in red and were accompanied by a sign that read: “Wimbledon strawberries tainted with Palestine blood, courtesy of Barclays.”
Barclays became the official banking partner of Wimbledon at the start of 2023. Monday was not the first time the company has been the target of protests.
In February, two groups were outside a branch in England campaigning against the banks investment in fossil fuels, and the alleged links between Barclays and the arms trade in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
“We have been asked why we invest in nine defence companies supplying Israel, but this mistakes what we do,” read a statement by Barclays. “We trade in shares of listed companies in response to client instruction or demand and that may result in us holding shares. Whilst we provide financial services to these companies, we are not making investments for Barclays and Barclays is not a ‘shareholder’ or ‘investor’ in that sense in relation to these companies.”
This is also not the first time Wimbledon has been disrupted by a protest. Last year, Just Stop Oil interrupted the first round of the tournament by trowing orange confetti, glitter and jigsaw pieces onto the courts.
In January, the Australian Open was also briefly delayed when a pro-Palestinian protester threw papers onto the court in the middle of the fourth-round match between Alexander Zverev and Cameron Norrie.
