Wimbledon Tennis Championships slammed in London Underground advert

Adverts have gone up on the London Underground slamming the Wimbledon Tennis Championships for being involved with Barclays bank for its accused involvement in the Israel-Palestine conflict and climate change. One of the adverts read “from Gaza to global warming we’re making a killing.

“We’re funding everything from fossil fuels to the Israeli arms trade. So when you keep your money with us, you can rest assured you’ll be making a killing too.”

The other advert read: “At Wimbledon, we’ve let Barlcays’ dirty money stain our tennis whites. Our sponsor bankrolls fossil fuel expansion and Israeli arms companies and we couldn’t care less!”

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It comes as on July 1, a group of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered outside Wimbledon with a giant tennis ball and strawberries “tainted with Palestinian blood” to demonstrate against Barclays’ sponsorship of the event.

The protest, organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, saw about 100 protesters stand outside the main entrance to the south-west London tennis club on Monday – the first day of the Grand Slam competition.

Protesters set up a giant tennis ball with the words “Barclays sponsors Wimbledon and genocide” written on it, along with plates of strawberries covered in red sauce. On the strawberries were written the words: “Wimbledon strawberries tainted with Palestinian blood, courtesy of Barclays”.

Queuing fans looked on as protesters chanted “stop bombing schools, and stop bombing hospitals”. A speaker played the Italian song Bella Ciao as attendees held a sign that read “Stop The Genocide”.

Lewis Backon, 28, from London, a spokesman for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said Barclays was financing companies supplying weapons to Israel. “The official partner of Wimbledon is Barclays Bank, and Barclays is financing, to the tune of billions of pounds, companies supplying weapons and military technology that Israel is using in its genocidal assault on Palestinians in Gaza,” he said.

A TfL spokesperson said: “These are not authorised by TfL or our advertising partner Global. It is flyposting, which we take extremely seriously. We have already instructed our contractors to remove any of these posters found on our network.”

An All England Club spokesperson said, “Barclays is an important partner of ours and we are working closely with them in a number of areas, including through our Set for Success programme, which is helping to support disadvantaged secondary students in schools across the UK. As a result of Barclays’ support this programme has expanded from 19 to 42 secondary schools across the UK, enabling more young people to gain confidence and build leadership skills to improve their future opportunities in life.”

A Barclays spokesperson said: “We are proud of our partnership with Wimbledon which supports the growth of The Championships and opportunities for young people across the UK through the Wimbledon Foundation. Like many other banks, we provide financial services to companies supplying defence products to the UK, NATO and its allies. We are also financing an energy sector in transition, including providing $1trn of Sustainable and Transition Finance by 2030 to build a cleaner and more secure energy system.”

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