Wimbledon Effect

The point of the analogy is that a national and international institution (the annual tennis tournament at Wimbledon) can be highly successful despite the lack of strong native competition, as in modern tennis Britain has produced very few Wimbledon singles champions, with only Anne Jones, Virginia Wade and Andy Murray winning the tournament in the Open Era.

The phrase can be used positively to assert the economic success of liberal attitudes towards foreign ownership (and sometimes to emphasize that such attitudes promote a level playing field for domestic and foreign interests alike); or it can be used negatively to emphasize how these policies have eroded a nation's ability to produce globally leading domestic companies.

It has also, for instance, been used in banking reform debates in South Korea,[5] as well as in discussing business process outsourcing in India.

[6] The term has also frequently been appearing in sports in Japan since late 20th century, including sumo where there has been only one Japanese-born yokozuna since 1998 as most of the top players have been from Mongolia or Polynesia.

The vast majority of prominent competitors in K-1 came from the Netherlands or Thailand, while Pride's biggest names were from Brazil, United States, and Russia.