U.S. Open courtside seats will only continue to skyrocket in price

Some courtside seats in Arthur Ashe Stadium, the U.S. Open’s hottest tickets, will get more expensive in coming years, the USTA says.

Court-level ticket subscriptions with all-inclusive amenities for a stadium seat for the duration of the tournament now range from $22,000 to $55,000, said Kirsten Corio, the organization’s Chief Commercial Officer, in an interview. By 2026, they will range from $43,500 to $85,500, and by 2027, from $48,500 to $120,500. That money will buy what the USTA calls “all-inclusive curated menus and enhanced food options” along with “sweeping views of the court.”

The increases will accompany an $800 million USTA investment in the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center to renovate Ashe, the sport’s biggest stadium, and build a player performance center overlooking nearby practice courts.

Planning for those packages began as early as 2018, after the USTA installed a retractable roof on Ashe and turned to “elements of the fan experience and areas of the overall site that we had not addressed,” Corio said. Ashe’s lower bowl had far less capacity than other large Northern America sports stadiums and there was “far more demand for courtside seats than we could satisfy,” she said.

The renovations will roughly double the number of courtside seats to 5,000. The number of courtside seats paired with hospitality offerings — about 350 now — will increase to 2,500, Curio said. The remaining 2,500 seats will be a mix of general reserve, package and individual session seats. Ashe’s overall capacity will remain at roughly 24,000.

The non-profit USTA plows proceeds from the Open, its biggest source of revenue, into growing tennis in the United States. For 2024, according to USTA financials, the tournament generated $559,658,000 in revenue.

Subscribers include bankers, lawyers and executives from the fashion, communications and insurance industries along with “long-time families that go back all the way to Forest Hills,” where the tournament was held until 1978, Corio said.

About 1,000 clients have already placed $500 deposits for the seats for next year, Corio said, with the new offerings getting high marks from some including “corporate clients or longtime clients who really appreciate proximity to the court,” along with food and beverage amenities.

But the plans have distressed some fans. “There’s been concern expressed around price points, in particular been expressed by those who tend to resell the majority of their seats —  concern about the potential inability to generate the significant profits they’ve been able to generate over the past generations,” Corio said.

One long-time subscriber with courtside seats who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was trying to negotiate a subscription price with USTA said he resold tickets for sessions he couldn’t watch to pay for his subscription. He shared invoices showing he pays roughly $25,000 per seat now for multiple seats. He said the hospitality packages, which would roughly quadruple his cost per seat by 2027, were so expensive he would no longer be able to cover his costs. He said he worried he wouldn’t be able to secure seats without the hospitality package that are comparable to the ones he has now.

“I love tennis — I’ve been playing since I was eight,” he said. “I make a decent salary that I can afford these things, but this is beyond — this is uber-rich territory now.”

The USTA will not “not guarantee subscriptions or seat assignments for future years for the US Open,” though “we anticipate” that current subscribers who remain in good standing will have the opportunity to purchase full series subscriber general reserve courtside tickets that do not have hospitality or access to clubs included, said Brendan McIntyre, a USTA spokesman, in an email. But, he said, “these seats would be in a different courtside location than their 2025 US Open seats.”

The subscriber said he felt as if the USTA was “turning on people who’ve been loyal to the tournament, saying ‘take it or leave it.’”