AELTC Launches Wimbledon Kids To Bring New Audiences To The Championships

As The Championships 2021 gets under way, the AELTC has launched Wimbledon Kids – a new series aimed at ‘opening up the magic’ of the event to younger audiences.

Helmed by lead characters Bounce – a free-spirited tennis ball – and Blade – a Wimbledon purist, stickler for the rules, and one of Centre Court’s 54 million pieces of grass – the first three episodes explore the history, traditions, and quirks of the tournament. 

The pair’s adventures take them around the grounds of the All-England Club, discovering everything from why players wear white to how many relatives Blade has on Centre Court. 

The content was produced and created in-house by AELTC’s content agency, LiveWire Sport – which is shortlisted for Agency of the Year at the Sport Industry Awards 2021.

“We are always in pursuit of new ways to keep Wimbledon relevant and, while continuing to serve our existing audiences, take it to new ones as well,” said Alexandra Willis, Head of Communications, Content and Digital at the AELTC. 

“Young people are pivotal to the future of sport, and so we are absolutely thrilled to be introducing the YouTube Kids community to Wimbledon through our new Wimbledon Kids channel. We hope they fall in love with Blade and Bounce, just as we have during the process of creating them, and that this is the beginning of a great friendship.”

Leigh Walsh, Head of Content, LiveWire Sport, added: “This was an incredibly rewarding and entertaining project to work on. Finding innovative ways to engage younger audiences is something we pride ourselves on, and we’re grateful to the team at Wimbledon for collaborating with us to try something new. We hope children across the world have as much fun watching these episodes as we did producing them.” 

Working closely with YouTube Kids, the series landed on the global English-speaking homescreens of the app over the weekend.

Also on the channel is a series of shorts, inspired by Pixar Popcorn, which explore funny, relatable, and inspiring stories from The Championships – including Roger Federer’s Backwards Trousers, and Venus and Serena: The Sisters Who Took Over The World.