Key Takeways
Every June, Britain runs the same play: a horse race in a field in Berkshire, a King on horseback, and a tennis tournament with a waiting list that feels engineered to exclude you. The summer season is here, and it is a Very Big Deal.
EduBirdie surveyed 1,500 UK Gen Zers on their attitudes toward Royal Ascot, Trooping the Colour, Wimbledon, and World Cup. What came back was honest, a little contradictory, and considerably more self-aware than anyone in a fascinator would like.
Let’s get the basic numbers out of the way. Attendance intentions for all three events sit firmly in the minority:
When it comes to watching Britain’s summer events on TV, Wimbledon dominates — 54% of Gen Zers tune in, and not just from their sofa. It’s one of the few sporting events that spills into pubs, parks, and communal spaces, making watching it feel like a genuine social occasion rather than a passive viewing choice. Trooping the Colour pulls 18%. Royal Ascot barely registers at 7% — watching horse racing without a bet on and a glass of Pimm’s in hand has limited appeal. The takeaway: Wimbledon has crossed over into mainstream viewing culture, while Ascot remains an event you either attend or ignore entirely.
Royal Ascot is, technically, a horse racing event. You wouldn’t know it from our data. When we asked those planning to attend why they’re going, the answers were illuminating:
The sport, which is nominally the entire point of the event, barely registers. Fewer than one in eight attendees is primarily there for the racing. Royal Ascot has quietly become a themed immersive experience with a dress code, a content opportunity, and a secondary marriage market — and everyone attending is more or less fine with that.
What they’re less fine with is the rest of it. When asked what irritates them most, Gen Z named high prices (48%), people faking wealth they don’t have (43%), using horses for human entertainment (34%), people getting drunk (29%), and grown adults playing dress-up like it’s the 1800s (21%).
Here’s where it gets interesting: the same generation attending Ascot to dress up and post content is also the generation most likely to call out the performance of wealth.
Of the three events, Trooping the Colour is the one most visibly struggling for relevance with this generation. When asked what they find interesting about it:
The ceremony’s biggest cultural function, at this point, is generating meme content. More people are tuning in for the Twitter/X reaction threads than out of any genuine sense of patriotic pride.
Less than a third see it as a cultural positive. At a moment when public money is a live political conversation, taxpayers funding a parade for a King is what irritates 41% of Gen Z most.
Wimbledon is in better shape than the other two, at least culturally. It’s the most-watched event of the summer by a significant margin — 54% say they watch it on TV — and when asked who Wimbledon is really for, the most popular answer was “everyone, actually” at 48%.
But then there’s the ticket situation. 52% say the ballot system is fair in theory, broken in practice.
On the flip side, when asked which of the three events should be cancelled, Wimbledon came out virtually unscathed at 6%. Royal Ascot (19%) and Trooping the Colour (23%) weren’t so lucky.
Here’s the wildcard. With the US-hosted World Cup running this summer, some matches will kick off in the middle of the night in the UK. We asked whether Gen Zers would take sick leave the day after to recover:
Nearly a third (30%) said they’d pull a sickie for the biggest games, 19% would just white-knuckle through on zero sleep, and 5% have already quietly booked annual leave for World Cup matches. Only 21% said football simply isn’t worth it — and 25% don’t watch at all.
Add it up: more than half of respondents are willing to absorb some personal cost — lost sleep, a fake sickie, actual annual leave — to watch football. The hierarchy of loyalty in Britain’s summer calendar looks nothing like the official schedule.
The British summer season isn’t dying — it’s being absorbed, consumed, and reformatted by a generation with smartphones, student debt, and a sharp eye for what these events actually are underneath the pageantry. The institutions that adapt to that clarity will survive. The ones that keep insisting on their own mythology probably won’t. The horses, presumably, will keep running either way.
