Hospitality boom and $100 chicken nuggets drive US Open ticket affordability crisis

This month billionaire Bill Ackman and New York mayor Zohran Mamdani publicly protested the cost of attending the US Open at Flushing Meadows, Queens, as the tournament began. Their complaints—from Ackman objecting to a grounds pass listed for $363 to Mamdani arranging 1,000 $100 tickets that drew more than 336,000 applicants—have focused attention on rising prices, expanded hospitality and a booming resale market.

For generations the US Open has traded on its reputation as the people’s slam, where fans could take the 7 train to Queens, buy a grounds pass and spend the day close to the world’s best players. That model is under strain as demand surges and the tournament has evolved into a three-week cultural festival mixing sport, fashion and celebrity. The $23 Honey Deuce has become a souvenir and status marker, suites and sponsor boxes are filled by celebrities and influencers, and the event surpassed one million visitors for the first time in 2024.

Ticket resale and the role of Ticketmaster lie at the center of the affordability debate: New York law allows tickets to be resold at any price, and Ticketmaster both sells original tickets and hosts the Open’s resale marketplace. The USTA acknowledges receiving a portion of Ticketmaster’s fees when a verified resale ticket changes hands but declined to answer what percentage it receives or how much the arrangement generates annually. The USTA argues that shutting down Ticketmaster resale would push buyers toward less secure third-party platforms, while Craig Tiley acknowledged that “One of our biggest challenges is the secondary market.” A grounds pass officially priced at $65 was listed for $321 on Saturday, and the USTA declined to disclose how much face-value inventory is made available before tickets appear on the secondary market.

Craig Tiley arrived this summer as the USTA’s new chief executive after more than two decades running Tennis Australia and the Australian Open and has spoken of expanding the event’s offerings. “This will become the tennis Disneyland,” he said, adding that the Open’s growth would come from creating more experiences rather than necessarily extending the event’s length. Tiley described an “insatiable appetite” to attend and called that demand a “nice problem,” while cautioning that “We’re not going to be one of those events that just want to pack the precinct for the sake of packing it.”

Physical changes to Arthur Ashe Stadium are reshaping seating and price structures: the venue is midway through an $800m renovation that will leave overall capacity largely unchanged while eliminating about 3,500 moderately priced loge seats and increasing courtside capacity by roughly 2,000. The old loge averaged $291 per session; non-club courtside seats replacing much of that inventory average more than $560, and hospitality seats run above $2,300.

Those shifts are reflected in USTA financials: broadcast revenue was $149.1m in 2021 and $145m in 2024, while ticket revenue rose 37% from $151.7m to $208.5m over the same period. Sponsorship revenue increased 26% and hospitality and service revenue more than doubled from $41m to $83.3m. The USTA’s net assets rose from $371m to $734m over the past decade, with more than $580m held in cash and investments, and the Open now generates nearly nine out of every 10 dollars of USTA operating revenue, up from roughly 80% a decade ago.

The USTA points to ongoing investments and accessibility initiatives as qualifications to the criticism: it reinvests substantial sums in grassroots tennis, facilities and player development, and notes the pandemic’s demonstration of vulnerability from reliance on a single event. Fan Week provides free entry to the grounds, qualifying and practices, eight of the event’s 22 days offer free access, and the USTA said a record number of children had visited during the preceding week. Kirsten Corio, the USTA’s chief commercial officer, said: “We knew that we would be leaving dollars on the table,” and added, “The market has spoken and has demonstrated that we have.”

The USTA says it will reassess its ticketing policies after the tournament, and Tiley insisted accessibility will remain part of the calculation even as the Open grows. “There is an insatiable demand,” Tiley said Saturday, and the challenge, he added, is matching it with “the balance of making sure kids have access”.