Tony Matharu, mechanical elephants and the London Sports Festival
Hotelier and Central London Alliance founder Tony Matharu on why he created the London Sports Festival – and why 2025 will be bigger than ever.
For Tony Matharu, it all goes back to a giant mechanical elephant and the power of the spectacle. It was the hotelier and philanthropist’s 2006 patronage of immersive theatre show the Sultan’s Elephant, whose centrepiece was an elaborate, 42-ton figure which drew huge crowds when it roamed central London, that planted the seed of one of his latest ventures.
Matharu’s Central London Alliance is behind the London Sports Festival, a summer-long programme that turns some of the capital’s most iconic settings into venues for padel, football and basketball. With apologies to Field Of Dreams, the rationale is simple: if you put it on, they will come – and the whole ecosystem will benefit.
“I remember doing something called the Sultan’s Elephant ages ago. Eventually it happened, and it was the cultural event of the year,” Matharu tells City AM.
“People were inspired by it. They came from everywhere and were using their phones and saying, you must come out. A million people came and watched. I suspect that planted a seed in my mind to do something that can inspire people to get on their phones and say, ‘Come and play, come and watch’.”
The London Sports Festival’s mission
Instead of a giant elephant, the spectacles at the London Sports Festival include padel and table tennis in the shadow of St Paul’s Cathedral, and courts for football and basketball outside the Guildhall. Last year a Guinness World Record for the longest pickleball marathon was set, with keen sportsman Matharu playing his part.
The festival was conceived as a way of encouraging more people to spend time in the City and central London after the pandemic – an extension of the CLA’s aims – leveraging the unifying power of sport. It is open to all, from corporate groups to local residents, launches this week and is due to run all the way until late September.
“It was part of a broader appeal to reanimate London’s streets, make it more vibrant and get people to return to the city that we know and love,” Matharu adds.
“It was evident to me that London was on its knees and it needed to be picked up. And there were not sufficient people – or in fact, anybody – articulating support for that. Central government and local government were, I think, in this sort of vacuum and not quite understanding what the picture would be like in the future
“So I set up the Central London Alliance, which only had one purpose: to get people back into central London and to stimulate activity and the economy. And what I thought would be eight months and perhaps 50 partners is five years on and 25,000 or more different people engaged with us, so clearly we captured a mood.
Tony Matharu hoping for more world records
“London Sports Festival has emerged from that. It started off as single activations happening in odd places. And then it grew and more activities, more places, now all over London. And it has grown and is growing because it’s been successful. We put up a [padel] court in front of Marble Arch last year and it was the most booked court in the world.”
Matharu, who still plays cricket and hockey, promises that this summer’s London Sports Festival will be “wider and bigger, and there’ll be more attendees than ever before”. Other attractions for 2025 include padel table tennis and bucketball, both in Aldgate.
He adds: “Our learnings from the past are being utilised to encourage more of the things that work best. You can look out for a potential world record later on this year. We’re still working on that with Guinness World Records, but watch this space, and that will hopefully involve broad communities across the whole of London.”
