U.S. Open ticket prices continue to soar

The U.S. Open is underway, which means that so, too, is the annual conversation about ticket prices for tennis’ American Slam.

On Wednesday afternoon, the humble grounds pass — perhaps the best deal for fans willing to forgo the marquee players on stadium courts for the lesser stars who will play on outer courts when main-draw play starts Sunday — sold for $69 and up at the Open’s ticket office just outside the entrance to the tennis center grounds. A grounds pass for the first day of the main draw on Sunday cost $158.96 at the ticket office.

Arthur Ashe Stadium primary market tickets started at $154 for Section 320, Row M, which buys a seat behind, if several hundred feet above, the baseline. Prices galloped up to $1,267 for Section 55 Row AA. That seat is courtside but with a view impeded by the umpire’s chair, according to Ticketmaster’s 360 view feature.

No primary market tickets were available on Ticketmaster for the men’s Sept. 7 final, but tickets for the women’s Sept. 6 final ranged from $272 for Section 330, Row Q — an Alpine view — to $2,944 for something closer to sea level, at Section 26, Row F.

The promise of primary market tickets, whose price fluctuates by demand but can still be cheaper than those on the frothy resale market, brought some fans to the ticket office Wednesday, in between the rains.

“Every year, they raise the prices,” said Leonard Tobin, 81, of Manhattan. “They have a monopoly. I don’t have a choice. I love tennis.”

The retired entrepreneur recorded his purchases in precise script on a yellow legal pad: seven mostly day sessions so far, for prices ranging from $140.46 second round to $1,049.60 for a night men’s semifinal.

Tobin, a 40-year Open veteran — he remembers when it was held at Forest Hills and a ticket cost $16, he said — shared two bits of wisdom for the neophyte fan. First, “What you have to keep doing is coming back, because all of a sudden tickets open up and you never know ... George Clooney or Obama decides not to go,” and new tickets get released. Second: Courtside isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. “You can see how hard they hit, and the spin, but you don’t [see] the whole court, making it hard to watch a point develop. Sitting in loge, you can see the whole court and it’s half the price.”

Tobin said that in his experience, resale tickets often cost 25% or more than face value, except in cases where upsets paired unknown players against each other in the tournament’s later rounds.

The resale market was already hot Wednesday, with a new Fan Week offering — a mixed-doubles event stuffed with brand-name singles players and a $1 million winner’s purse — generating an average asking price of $520 for evening tickets, according to price aggregator TicketIQ. One ticket was selling for $11,790.

According to TicketIQ, opening day main-draw seats in Ashe asking prices started at $227, rising to $42,986 for the men’s final. That sum — slightly more than the average cost of a year’s tuition at a private nonprofit college — buys one seat at Section 35, Row E, behind the north baseline, dead center.