The Economics of Wimbledon 🎾

Good morning, this is The Hedge, the newsletter that's like a packet of Monster Munch Pickled Onion. A bit weird, big on personality, but really bloody good.

Reading Time: 5m 11sec

• Prices accurate as of approximately 4PM BST.

🎾The Economics of Wimbledon 

With the world in lockdown and Wimbledon cancelled in 2020, the All England Tennis Club (the posh lot that run the tournament), posted a profit of £40.5 million. 

WTF? How does an organisation who exists to set up games of tennis make bank without setting up games of tennis? The strawbs and cream are fuckin' extortionate but they're not going to get £40 mil worth across the channel, what with Brexit and all.

The reason? Insurance. That's right, someone picked up a whopper of a sales commission from the All England Tennis Club, because they took out an insurance policy in 2003 that would cover them in the event of a global pandemic. That old battle axe always knocking round a few on Court 23 must be Mystic Meg.

The Prize Money

It's a big potential pay day for the players, with both the men's and women's winner taking home a cool £2 mil cash. Players get paid more the longer they last through the tournament (obviously), with quarter finalists picking up £310,000 and even first rounders pocketing £50k.

If you're thinking of entering the mixed doubles, I wouldn't bother. Go out in the first round you and you're partner will have to split just £3,750. That wouldn't even cover the tube fare and a jug of Pimms.

Still, it's better than the ball boys and girls. While Boomers (in tennis years) like Novak Djokavic and Rafael Nadal will be picking up a few hundred k, the hard working teens will be paid......in experience. Yep. 

🛢Oil is Going Down, But Fuel Keeps Going Up. WTF?

You feel it, right? That swift kick to the groin as you insert the fuel pump into your car? It used to be that the biggest rip off on a motorway services were the £4 Lion bars, but not these days.

We're paying upwards of £2 a litre in some places at the moment, which is weird because the price of crude oil (the stuff they pump out of the ground in the Middle East which gets turned into petrol and diesel) has been dropping for about a month now. 

So what gives?

Well, in a situation that is entirely on brand for 2022, no one's taking the blame. Some are saying the government is keen to keep the price up because they get a shitload of tax revenue (which they do), others are blaming the retailers and others still are blaming the refineries who turn crude oil into usable fuel.

One point to keep in mind is that the energy industry relies heavily on long term price contracts known as futures, which is an agreement to buy or sell a commodity at a set price in the future. Oil is a commodity, and so is stuff like wheat, cotton, beef, coal and sugar.

This works well for Farmer Jezza who wants to lock in a price for next year's crop, and it works well for Warburton's who want to know how much the wheat for their bread is going to cost.

What this means is that just because the price of oil is going down now, there are plenty of companies along the supply chain who are paying high prices they locked in ages ago.

All we can say is that with no end in sight for the war in Ukraine, energy producers like Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Saudi Aramco are likely to keep cashing in for some time, while us plebs get shafted at the bowser.

🏛Rishi Resigns

By now you've surely heard the news that the Chancellor Rishi Sunak has resigned. He's still an MP, but he's no longer balancing the books for the country.

I read his resignation letter, and one part stood out.

Reading between the lines, Rishi seems to have wanted to raise taxes to try and get the country's finances under control, whereas Boris wants to cut taxes to get people to like him again.

Honestly, I've re-written this section about 9 times because new ministers keep resigning. It's 2:44pm on Wednesday 6th July right now. I'd be shocked if Bozza is still PM by the time you get this tomorrow morning.

💷 Get That Money

Estimated Take: £200+ in the next few weeks

Times are right. You know this. I know this. The media knows this. The problem is that every time there's a story on "surviving the cost of living crisis," it's just penny pinching bullshit like switching your appliances off at the wall or wearing an extra jumper inside 🙄

Fuck that. I don't want your life to suck just so you can survive. I want you to earn more money.

So, every week I'm going to bring you an idea. Some of these will be as basic as a Dacia dashboard, and others will be a big hitters that will take more effort but give you a bigger pay off. They won't all be for you. But some of them might be.

Here's number 1.

Sell stuff on Ebay. Oh, cringe. I know. Basic, right? It is. But you know what? You've got more money lying around your house than you realise. Trust me, I've picked up hundreds of pounds doing this. Here's the steps.

• Download the eBay app for your phone.

• In the top right hand corner, there is a camera button. Select it.

• At the top, you can choose 'Barcode Scanner'.

• Now walk around the house and scan everything with a barcode that you don't use.

• eBay has sold a bazillion items in it's history, so chances are it will bring up the selling prices for loads of the exact item you've just scanned.

• The stuff that surprised me the most? Books and old phones - even ones with broken screens.

• And you know what else is cool about the barcode scanner? You can use it to find items outside your house that are underpriced that you could sell on eBay for a profit. In posh finance talk this is called arbitrage.

• Next time you're at Aldi and they're selling some random kids toy or a calculator for cheap, scan that bad boy and see what they're going for on eBay. You might be surprised.

• Final tip. Stick to small items where you can. Way easier to post.

📃Survey Says

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Just copy and paste this ➡️ "Hey! I came across this awesome newsletter, thought you might want to check it out."

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See you next week.

Jason