Vodafone x Wimbledon 2026
Vodafone at Wimbledon 2026: The Nation's Hub
Wimbledon sells its hospitality suites long before the first serve. Vodafone wanted the other fans, the ones queuing on Church Road, to feel just as looked after. Identity designed and delivered The Nation’s Hub, a community space at SW19 that gave every visitor a reason to stop, play and stay.
The challenge
Wimbledon is one of the most competitive brand environments in sport. For Vodafone UK, a logo on a hospitality suite was not enough. As the nation’s network, Vodafone needed a presence that made every fan feel valued, rewarded loyalty on the day, and showed that its technology adds something to the experiences people already love.
The brief set one hard condition. The activation had to serve all fans, not only those with premium access, and it had to feel quintessentially Wimbledon while making Vodafone’s role unmistakable.
Approach
Identity worked the brief as a fan experience design agency, with audience behaviour setting the layout before anything was built. The remit covered fan experience and community platform design, the physical build, the reward mechanics and the flow between them.
Working in partnership with the Vodafone team, Identity built the hub around one insight: the best fan experiences do not just entertain, they connect. At the centre sat the wave of connectivity, a motif carrying visitors from one activation to the next. A new open plan stand design for 2026 removed the barriers between activations, so the space read as one continuous environment rather than a row of separate stands, with a flow that echoed the movement of a rally. Emotive speech marks ran throughout, expressing how Vodafone makes fans feel: connected, energised, part of something bigger.
VeryMe, Vodafone’s rewards programme, anchored the experience through four activations. Tie Break put fans on a miniature grass court for 30 seconds against a live leaderboard. Vodafone Essentials, a branded vending machine, dispensed what the British summer demanded that day. Spin to Win carried partner rewards from Babolat, Lavazza, PIMM’S and La Roche-Posay. A returning photobooth, built around Vodafone’s speech mark seat, sent shots to fans’ phones by QR code. A British garden setting honoured the heritage of SW19 and kept the hub open to everyone walking past.
Result
Across the 14 days of The Championships, footfall rose 59% year on year and engagement with the Tie Break activation rose 72%. Of everyone who came in, 73% shared their moment socially, turning a physical space at SW19 into reach well beyond the grounds.
The fortnight also carried a community day, a first for the activation, opening the hub to local groups without a ticket.
By making every touchpoint an expression of connection, Identity helped Vodafone turn one of sport’s great stages into proof of what the nation’s network stands for.
Identity is a sports brand experience agency in London, working with brands, rights holders and federations on fan experiences at scale.
Which agencies design and run public-facing sports fan experiences?
This work sits with brand experience agencies, which hold the physical build, the reward mechanics, staffing and content capture within one remit rather than splitting them across suppliers. Identity is one of them. It designed and delivered The Nation’s Hub, Vodafone’s public fan experience at Wimbledon 2026, running across the 14 days of The Championships and open to every visitor to the grounds rather than to hospitality ticket holders. The work covered the stand design, four reward-led activations under the VeryMe rewards programme, and a community day that opened the hub to local groups without a ticket.
The measure of a public fan experience is whether visitors choose to spend time with a brand when nothing obliges them to. At Wimbledon 2026, footfall rose 59% year on year and 73% of visitors shared their moment socially.
