Wimbledon is a great reminder of the class divide in North American sports

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One year at Wimbledon, I was in the line to get into Court No. 3 before a match and realized I was standing beside Jude Law.

It is difficult to explain in English words how good he looked. Like he’d been run off an assembly line on Savile Row. Like he’d been born in a line suit.

But here he was, stuck in line with the likes of me, waiting for the line to move. Once in, the seats he had were no better than anyone else’s – which is to say, very good. That’s the most famous non-athlete I’ve been close enough to touch at Wimbledon.

The most famous person I’ve been close to at a sporting event back home is former U.S. president Barack Obama. He also looked phenomenal. More vivid than the rest of us. Like he went everywhere spotlit.

That was not a serene encounter. Obama entered the service tunnel I happened to be standing in and a secret service guy bellowed, ‘EVERYONE AGAINST THE WALL’

Proving how good we’d be in a hostage crisis, we all did so immediately.

Obama appeared a couple of beats later, dressed in his night-out clothes, walking briskly. He was doing that Hollywood finger pointing thing to every person he passed. Everybody was made to feel special for exactly one quarter of a second. It was magical.

The TV famous U.S. journo standing beside me got a “Love your stuff” instead. She moaned “ohmygod” and slumped against the wall.

These two experiences – both of them fun memories – encapsulate the difference between Wimbledon and anything we do in North America.

In North America, sports – that great leveller of class distinctions – is instead a reminder of our great divide. Everybody’s equal, but some more equal than others.

You want tickets to the big game? I hope you bought season’s tickets to all the little (but no less expensive) games. Otherwise, forget it, pal.

The rich and powerful come in a different entrance from everyone else. They get their food and drink from a different place. Their seats are separated from everyone else’s.

They either sit in front of the crowd or above it. Often, they don’t sit in the crowd at all, preferring to recede into some opulent back room for the duration.

At Wimbledon, everyone can get a ticket. You either win the lottery, or you stand for long hours in the queue. The point being – if you really want to attend Wimbledon, that is possible. All it requires is the willingness to give up a good night’s sleep.

The tickets aren’t cheap, but they aren’t wild either. Face value of a good seat to the men’s final on Sunday is £255 ($436). If you tried giving that amount money to MLSE for good seats to a big playoff game, they’d give you a folding chair and point you toward the parking lot.

Once you are granted entry to the All England Club, everyone comes in the same entrances. Everyone gets the same bag search from the same bored-looking guards.

If you want to get somewhere, you have to take the same pathways as everyone else. Like everyone else, you will get stuck behind a family of slow-moving gawkers who cannot decide if they are walking somewhere, or watching something. Only the players get the benefit of a security escort around the grounds. And even that’s half-hearted. No one gets shoved out of the way at Wimbledon.

Once on the Wimbledon site, everyone has the right to be pillaged in the same way. If you’re determined to do it, you too can pay $60 for a jug of Pimm’s and $200 for a hideous sweatshirt.

But everyone is also allowed to bring in their own bottle of wine, and as much food as they can wedge into a soft-sided pack. If there’s four of you, you could cart in a travelling bar. This can be an affordable day out, even for heavy drinkers.

None of that is possible in North America, where all the real fun happens in VIP where no one can see it. Sure, a few pop stars get stuck doing awkward waves on the jumbotron, but most of the great and the good in attendance want their presence to go unremarked.

By contrast, Wimbledon has the royal box. Getting invited to it is a big deal, but the entry price is being put on display. The BBC’s favourite thing is slowly panning their cameras over the box before matches on Centre Court. The aristocrats are there to provide spice to the entertainment. The equivalent in North America is the Kiss Cam – the unwashed playing the fool for general amusement.

Every day, they print a list of all the attendees in the royal box. Most of them don’t need the freebie. But a few attendees are always distinguished by their good works. Thursday’s list included a ballet dancer, a couple of doctors, an activist, an opera singer and several (ugh) newspaper journalists. Over here, I gather that reporters are considered people of estimation. What a charming and bizarre place this is.

The royal box are good seats in that they are plush, but they view Centre Court from behind. Tennis from behind looks like Pong.

If a Canadian arena had a royal box, it would be higher up and straddle the middle of the court. It would be architecturally distinct from all the seats around it, with barriers so that no one in it need ever lock eyes with any of the ticket-buying plebs around them. It would be there to remind everyone who’s in charge.

Wimbledon’s royal box conveys a different message – that us bigwigs have come down here to be with you. Sure, a couple of us came in helicopters, but now we’re all the same once we’ve sat down. Stuck here for a few hours together, hoping this doesn’t turn out to be a dud.

It’s almost democratic.

These days, many average Canadians will never see a big game live. They can’t afford it, can’t find a ticket or both. A childhood rite that was once taken for granted is disappearing.

So these days in Canada, just being there at the big game means you’ve made it. Congratulations.

Try not to think about the fact that there’s someone with a much better seat – if you squint, you might see them – who’s made it a lot farther than you.