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\n Photo: Mike Lawrence\/USTA via Getty Images\n <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
When P.J. Simmons heard about the $800 million renovation of Arthur Ashe Stadium, and the addition of over 2,000 premium courtside seats, he was optimistic. \u201cI thought maybe that would depress prices slightly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
An environmental consultant by trade, Simmons might be the most knowledgeable person about Ashe who has never worked there. For up to eight hours on a given day, he monitors fluctuations in Ticketmaster and StubHub and dispenses advice on his website, the Road to 4.5 Tennis<\/a>, on the best way to score cheap Open seats. This has become especially helpful as tickets for the tournament have spiked, largely due to the resale market, which the Open can\u2019t regulate like other Grand Slams.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The average cost of cheap seats in Ashe, the marquee venue at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, have seen an average markup of over 200 percent. At the other end of the spectrum, a single courtside seat for the men\u2019s finals was going for $29,000 in August, and that\u2019s despite rumors that the two top male players, Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, may withdraw because of injuries. \u201cThe other day, I was like, \u2018Oh man, there are front-row tickets for this night, and that would be so fun to treat somebody to. Ten minutes later, they were gone. And then ten minutes after that, they were fucking on resale,\u201d Simmons said.<\/p>\n It\u2019s July, less than a month before Fan Week, the official start of the Open, and normie fanatics like Simmons, the die-hards without expense accounts or family offices, are stewing because they aren\u2019t finding the deals they expected at the updated Ashe. \u201cIt has almost been the reverse,\u201d he said. In fact, by the time the renovation project is completed next year, the world\u2019s largest tennis stadium will have no added capacity. Already, it\u2019s removed over half the seats from a section known as loge, the balcony above courtside where budget-conscious fans could hear the compressed explosion of a Naomi Osaka return or study the footwork of dark-horse Filipina player Alexandra Eala without paying to mingle with celebrities or receive seatside service.<\/p>\n While Kirsten Corio, the chief commercial officer of the U.S. Tennis Association, says that the renovation merely \u201ctakes a few thousand seats from upstairs and moves them downstairs,\u201d it would be clearer to say that the stadium is shifting as much capacity as it can closer to the court, where seats are more expensive. The new geometry of the stadium provides easy access to new restaurants and bars exclusively available to fans sitting courtside, including the Blue Room, which the USTA calls \u201cthe pinnacle of luxury \u2026 with dedicated seated tables for a plated multi-course dining experience.\u201d<\/p>\n In remaking Ashe, the USTA is doing the same thing as every branch of the hospitality industry by catering to those for whom money is no object with the most luxurious, most exclusive, most over-the-top experiences imaginable. At the Open, there has been a dramatic expansion of bundles with expensive hospitality options. This year\u2019s priciest offerings, which range as high as $85,000, include a gifting suite, locker-room access and private hitting clinics with tennis royalty on practice courts. Next year, a subterranean, London-social-club-style complex of lounges called the Bunker Suites is expected to open. During the tournament, access to the space, which is taking over a catacomb once used by players for warmups, has been floated at $120,000 per person.<\/p>\n If there is a preview of where the Open is headed, it can be found in Southern California. That\u2019s where Larry Ellison<\/a>, one of the richest men in the world, who is also a tennis fanatic, bought the Indian Wells Tennis Garden venue in 2009 and then loaded it with high-end amenities, including outposts of both Nobu and Spago offering tableside views of the courts. Ellison\u2019s innovations were disruptive: Fans who could afford \u201cTennis Paradise,\u201d as Indian Wells came to be known, began to expect similar offerings at other tournaments. The difference is that Indian Wells wasn\u2019t just operating like a private club during the tournament. For most of the year, Indian Wells is a privately-owned club.<\/p>\n The Open finds itself also competing with Wimbledon, the Henley Royal Regatta, the races at Royal Ascot, and other elite sporting events for the attention and patronage of rich rubberneckers. \u201cThey\u2019re not necessarily a tennis-playing fanatic or there for business. They\u2019re there for I want to go to the Super Bowl. I want to go to a World Cup final. I want to go to the US Open and get as close as I can,\u201d said Corio. They\u2019re people like the clients of Renee Falack, an adviser at the travel and destination-events agency Embark Beyond. \u201cThey\u2019re not necessarily so into tennis, but more into the scene and wanting to be there,\u201d she says. They\u2019re impulsive, too. \u201cLuckily, we have great contacts who are able to find tickets at the last minute.\u201d Of course, that means they\u2019re paying a premium on top of the $10,000 or more they\u2019re likely paying for a seat, \u201cbut they\u2019re okay with that.\u201d And they don\u2019t want to sit in the loge.<\/p>\n \u201cThey want to be near the players, they want to be on TV \u2014 that\u2019s definitely a part of it, especially in New York,\u201d Falack says. \u201cIt\u2019s not just about getting in the stadium or getting into the U.S. Open. They want to be courtside.\u201d<\/p>\n The U.S. Open has worked hard to attract younger fans, many of whom would be startled by how much the tournament has changed. \u201cNobody seems to remember,\u201d said Adrian Benepe, the former New York City Parks commissioner, who sat courtside during the 1979 women\u2019s-singles final between Chris Evert and Tracy Austin That was a year after the modern Open was born. For the previous half-century, the private West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, often described as \u201cAmerica\u2019s Wimbledon,\u201d had hosted the tournament. If tennis then had an image as exclusive, white, and stuffy, the West Side Tennis Club epitomized it. Players and spectators tended to wear all white. Advertising was minimal, and displays of enthusiasm were politely discouraged. \u201cIt was insular and, outside of among tennis fans, not a very big deal,\u201d recalled Richard Farley, an attorney who\u2019s been attending the Open since he was a teenager, back when he sat in the bleachers. These days, the law firms he works with invite him to their corporate boxes. \u201cThe National Invitation Tournament at Madison Square Garden was a bigger event,\u201d Farley said. \u201cYou would never dream of going out to Forest Hills and taking a client. They wouldn\u2019t come with you.\u201d<\/p>\n Tennis had long been a rich person\u2019s sport: To play, you needed access to a court, and most courts belonged to private clubs. But in the 1970s, a boom in public-tennis-court construction cultivated a new generation of everyday fans and interest in the sport was spurred by media spectacles like the 1973 \u201cBattle of the Sexes\u201d between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. The Open was evolving, too. One adjustment that now seems quaint but at the time resulted in near riots: night games. When a 1977 Guillermo Vilas match was shifted to the evening, fans staged a sit-in and threw objects at the court. That same year, a spectator was struck by a stray bullet during a night match, and Jimmy Connors lunged at a photographer after losing in the final. The tournament would be described as \u201csinister\u201d and \u201cpsychotic,\u201d reflecting the overall mood that summer of New York, plagued as it was by arson, blackouts, bankruptcy and a serial killer. \u201cThat was the era of people acting like maniacs in stadiums,\u201d said Farley.<\/p>\n The story goes that a flight into La Guardia inspired the move to Flushing Meadows. William \u201cSlew\u201d Hester, a freewheeling Mississippi oilman who had just become USTA president, was circling over Flushing Meadows\u2013Corona Park when he looked out the window and saw the future of tennis in a rusting, weed-filled stadium called the Singer Bowl. Hester envisioned a massive sports complex with the capacity for larger crowds and modern facilities for players and would offer over scores of tennis courts available to the public at modest hourly rates.<\/p>\n \u201cMoving to Flushing Meadows \u2014 to the borough of Queens \u2014 turned tennis from a country-club sport into a people\u2019s sport,\u201d said Benepe, who calls the old USTA \u201ca fussy, patrician organization.\u201d For the first time, a Grand Slam was played on public courts. Other organizations lease land from the city, including the Mets and Yankees. However, the USTA bonded itself with Queens in a highly public and emotional way, touting the Open as \u201cThe People\u2019s Slam.\u201d<\/p>\n In the 1980s, there were fears that the Open, which quickly outgrew the Singer Bowl (renamed the Louis Armstrong Stadium), would leave the city. The Dinkins administration kept it in New York with a deal reached in 1993, during the mayor\u2019s final weeks in office. \u201cWe could have easily lost it,\u201d said Claude Okin, the founder and CEO of Sportime, which operates private tennis clubs throughout New York. \u201cBut David Dinkins loved tennis.\u201d The 99-year lease requires the USTA to share revenue with the city and pay for its own infrastructure, an unheard of arrangement today, when sports franchises routinely extort the government for subsidies and tax breaks.<\/p>\n During the 2000s, the democratization of tennis seemed to stall. The audience for the Open became \u201cbifurcated,\u201d says Caitlin Thompson, founder and editor of Racquet magazine. \u201cYou\u2019d have the warrior types who\u2019d be like, \u2018I\u2019m gonna go watch a Kiki Bertens\u2013Elise Mertens battle,\u2019 one obscure Belgian player against another obscure Dutch player, on court 17, because you knew they\u2019d have it out and you\u2019d get your money\u2019s worth.\u201d The other segment became \u201cguys in fleece vests.\u201d It was around the 2010s that it became obligatory for banks, law firms, and luxury brands such as Mercedes and Rolex \u201cto get a well-placed box at the highest tier,\u201d Farley said. \u201cYou want to provide concierge service to your clients, who, if they\u2019re local, you get them car service to and from. And if they\u2019re out of town, you fly them in and you put them up at a nice hotel and do door-to-door service. And you\u2019ll do this over the course of two weeks with, if you\u2019re lucky, a different client every night.\u201d<\/p>\n The pandemic was a gift to tennis. Public courts were full again, many of them with new fans looking for safe outdoor activities. But the 2020 Open was played in empty stadiums, and in 2021 the tournament fell short of capacity because of reduced international travel. It was not long afterwards that the renovation now underway was conceived. The USTA, uncertain if there would ever be a normal tournament again, looked to the success of Ellison and Indian Wells and decided that a lucrative future \u2014 in a world where it was easy to imagine no future at all \u2014 lay in VIP suites. Hotels, airlines, and cruise ships also bet big on the rich: not just because there was money in it, but also because their backs were against the wall.<\/p>\n After 2022, the floodgates opened. \u201cWe just couldn\u2019t offer enough access to satisfy the demand,\u201d said Corio. With lockdown over, the demand for live events surged, and the tournament began blowing up previous attendance numbers. In 2024, the Open recorded a million guests for the first time. The exuberance of the scene was now part of the draw, attracting influencers who discovered that posing for selfies at Ashe made for great content. \u201cThe majority of them are calling brands being like, \u2018Hey, I\u2019ll do this for free,\u2019 making it look like they have sponsorships, but they don\u2019t,\u201d said Walker Ward, the creator of the Instagram meme account WalkSauce42_. The tournament became a place to be seen and to make money by being seen.<\/p>\n \u201cSocial media changed everything, and the Open is completely different because of it,\u201d said Chris Widmaier, the former head of communications for the USTA. \u201cIf you take a selfie at a Yankees game, great, you\u2019re a fan. If you take one at the Open, you\u2019re making a statement, and it says, \u2018Look at me, \u2018I\u2019m rich.\u2019\u201d The USTA appears to have embraced the opportunity to provide shareable experiences and photo ops \u2014 jumbo tennis rackets, puppies, Ball Crew Karaoke \u2014 that annoyed the old guard. \u201cLast year, the USTA was bragging about how it had hit an attendance record of 74,000, but it should be embarrassed,\u201d says an attorney who has attended nine Opens. The stadium is so packed, he says, \u201cthat people are constantly walking around, and you can see some of the players are irritated.\u201d But the organizers aren\u2019t complaining. This year\u2019s Amex presale sold out in under two hours.<\/p>\n The modern U.S. Open has always been about unruliness: fans talking between points, car alarms interrupting serves, planes threatening to land on top of Arthur Ashe. The only quiet thing about it is the stealthy way that the tournament has advanced upon its rivals in the global mega-event category. The tournament\u2019s annual economic contribution to the city exceeds $1.25 billion, said Danny Zausner, the longtime chief operating officer of the USTA. That is roughly four times the estimated impact of the Super Bowl when it was held in New York in 2014. It is more than that of a full season of the Mets and the Yankees combined, more than that of Fashion Week, more than those of Pride Weekend and the New York City Marathon.<\/p>\n In light of the tournament\u2019s growth, David Dinkins\u2019s progressive deal may appear lopsided when measured purely by the gap between organizer profits and direct payments to the city. The USTA, predictably, defends the arrangement. \u201cWe can all be angry about how the world\u2019s changed and how the rich get richer, how there\u2019s more velvet ropes than ever, but it\u2019s a little bit of fake news about the U.S. Open,\u201d said Okin, who sits on the organization\u2019s Eastern Board of Directors. \u201cThe USTA is actually really concerned about underserved markets. It\u2019s a reverse charity. It\u2019s Robin Hood. It is a super-liberal organization compared to most [tennis] federations, and even though it has this huge business, all that money is spent on low and no-cost tennis programs.\u201d<\/p>\n Among those programs is \u201cFan Week,\u201d which was created a decade ago in part to offer an affordable way to experience the tournament during the quiet period when lower-ranked players compete for the final 16 spots in the men\u2019s and women\u2019s singles draws. Last year, the Open moved its mixed-doubles competition, featuring top players, into Fan Week; these matches are either free or ticketed at significantly lower prices than what tennis featuring the likes of Coco Gauff and Jannik Sinner would be normally. Meanwhile, it continues to offer grounds passes, which grant first-come, first-served general-admission seating everywhere but Arthur Ashe and the ability to wander freely among courts, with prices varying between $65\u2013$150 depending on the day. \u201cYou can\u2019t even get an Uber ride across town for $60 or $70, but you can be here for 15 hours and be entertained,\u201d says Zausner. (For those driving in, a single parking spot on VividSeats was listed for $6,926 in August.)<\/p>\n