Sorry, purists: the Coachella-fication of the US Open is here to stay | US Open Tennis 2025

EVery August, the US Open takes place in Queens with its constant expanding consumption rituals. The fans are not content to buy, they do it: the $ 23 honey deucer held in the air for Instagram, the lobster roll of $ 40 displayed before the first service, the chicken nuggets at $ 100 in the caviar bought both flex as the flavor. Tennis has never been the cheapest day, but lately, the sticker’s shock feels less like a barrier than the point. Prix ​​labels are festival markers, proof that which was once a tournament with chic accents has turned into a cultural event. In what seems to be remarkably short, the major of New York has become a less sporty event than the ambitious brand.

The latest Grand Chelem tournament of the season, which ends on Sunday with an appetizing male final between Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, has never completely fell in love with its Tony roots as part of the New York “social season”, but its latest development has exceeded a major sporting event in a festival economy. Sport is still there – reflections plans, gatherings with a lungs, thrillers after mid -night – but the real main draw is a price of cocktails as small bonding problems, influencer blocks in brand bucket hats and a filmed dating show. The show is not the game of Thunderbolt de Sinner or the Power-Baseline game by Aryna Sabalenka, but that Chloe Malle is more on-one of Anna Wintour or Kareem Rahma of Subway takes his selfie on the field before or after the Honey Deuce short to dry. This libation, formerly just a pretty theme and vodka lemonade in a souvenir cup, transferred to a favorite object with inflation with its own Merch line. Whole kiosks now sell Honey Deuce shirts and trucker hats in the pastel colors, so that you can broadcast your Melon-Ball allegiance long after the mouth of wood is fading. It is less a drink than a franchise, a Funko pop alcoholic, the proof that you did not just attend the open: you consumed it, posted it, stacked, worn and recycled in the personal brand.

The open, known as the American national championships until 1968, has been staged every year since 1881, but it is decisive that functionality in the last decade has been stretch: temporal, spatial, financial and, more and more, attention-economic. From this year, the tournament has expanded its footprint starting with a Sunday rather than Monday, extending the 14 -day format familiar long in 15, or actually 20 if you count the controversial event in double mixed Purists the previous week. It is no longer just two weeks at the end of August and September on horseback, but a residence almost the month in the Meadows-Corona park, calibrated to order not only your time and your money, but your flow. The price of the price for this year’s event has climbed to 90 million itinerant dollars (66.6 million pounds sterling), the highest bag with a single event in the history of tennis and a jump of 20% compared to 2024. On the ground, the tennis partner of the United States went maximalist, a renovation of $ 800 million of $ 800 million for the renovation of the ASM). A performance center for $ 250 million players is riding next to it, equipped to house 2,800 athletes and those around, all part of the world’s arms race in sports infrastructure. Respecting the luxury standard of Wimbledon is no longer enough; The pressure is now also following the Indian wells and Madrid.

And in today’s climate, the most important currency is attention. Once upon a time, there was the opening of the United States in the collective imagination for two weeks; Now he infiltrates in August and September, supported by the USTA celebrity program, influencer activations and, yes, his new internal meeting show. Game, Set, Matchmaker – Eight couples at first glance filmed on the ground – is an explicit attempt to divert the economy of Love Island and to make the tendency of tennis on YouTube. It can scandalize traditionalists, but it is entirely a room with a tournament that now produces as much reality TV as reality.

Amanda Wight, Director of International Strategy, Marketing and Management of USTA celebrities, has become the impresario of this circuit. On Thursday, a profile of the New York Times detailed how she had grown in a small fishing village in Australia-Meridional, but now knows exactly when the SUV of Gigi Hadid stops at the president’s door, slips a colorful group on his wrist and the escort passing the phalanx of photogs on the blue carpet. In another life, she could organize a range of DJs in the desert; Now she reserves Olivia Munn and John Mulaney in Ashe and ensures that Coco Gauff selfie with Simone Biles goes to Instagram. Celebrities no longer “pass”. They are recruited, recorded and followed as assets in a derivative portfolio. The USTA enters the consultants to measure the engagement value of each famous face: how many messages, how many labels, how many millions of impressions. These figures determine if you get another invitation. The Open has built its own exchange of influencers, a merchant -term contracts on the Instagram history of Queen Latifah. If you are wondering why your flows have become ugly with broken selfies inside Ashe, often with a compulsory post-script like “Thank you @amicannexpress” or jpmorgan chase or emirates or a random make-up brand, it is not an accident. F1 paddocks with NBA front lines, Modern Sports All Court Star Power. But in New York, the open transformed it into something close to an art form. Sometimes it looks less like a stop during the tennis tour than a fashion week aperitif. The stands are used as a track, the sponsor is located like exhibition halls.

The brands have always hovered over tennis, but now they have colonized each space on the ground. Rolex maintains his discreet and air -conditioned sanctuary where you can hear Novak Djokovic mumn for him while politely cutting a carrot cake with chocolate tennis balls. It looks like a gaze from Geneva, disguised as a tennis match, a cool precision temple where the Daytona of $ 300,000 on the wrist of a collection is as much as the score. To a few sections, Graza olive oil reduces a seat matrix in the lower box filled with digital creators, influencers and fashion tiktkers. If Rolex is haute couture, Graza is streetwear – and both are also sewn in the cultural fabric of the US Open. The levels of service for the VIP and VVIP sets inside Ashe have always drawn my attention since my first year covering the open in 2008 – there have always been different restaurants and reception experiences available exclusively at the different levels of premium ticket – but the current configuration has put it on the scale at higher capitalization levels.

From the point of view of working studies, the irony is austere: the children of the ball sweating in a quarter of 10 hours, the workers of the concession shake food at the cost of gastronomy, the staff of the installations by removing the garbage and reconstructing the bathrooms, the security guards scanning QR codes to maintain the economy in motion – all celebrities can shine through an experience of locking Velvet and after their candidates carefully staged. The festival economy, whether in the Coachella desert or the heat of the Meadows, takes place on the sub-paid, many serving the few overexposed. However, sociologically, it’s more complicated. The open has long been proud and has been marketed as the “slam people”: no 7 metro wrinkles, noisy night sessions passing after 2 am, the roaring of Ashe echoing the Roosevelt avenue when a match tips the fifth set. This energy is always real and palpable, but it is more and more filtered by the performance of fans and the incessant din of conversation during the matches, especially within the two main stadiums. Assist is just to look at; It’s about being seen looking. For an increasing subset of fans, it means transforming content. Taylor Fritz’s girlfriend, Morgan Riddle, nicknamed by Times as “the most famous woman in male tennis”, argued that the “fangirls” led the memes and the merchant. The fiancée of Tommy Paul, the founder of Dairy Boy Paige Lorenze, folds the action in her lifestyle vlogs. They are not only spectators but producers, treating Ashe as the stadium and the studio.

The media theory would call this the triumph of the attention economy. What the USTA and its sponsors have achieved is the transformation of a two -week tournament into an endless flow. The result is a hybrid of competition and content, where the Kevin Hart cuts have attacked a suite or the launch of Kylie Jenner-Timothee Chalamet are as important as the next break. Everything that is popular becomes twisted, as Chris Black says, the podcaster and consultant in atmosphere. The open is no different.

And yet fans seem to love him. Attendance exceeded a million for the first time last year. Everyone you follow on Instagram or Tiktok seems to be there. For all complaints on how the land passes cost $ 60 (not so long), or how tickets are directly siphone on the resale market and never strike the box office at their nominal value (not confirmed but probably true), and a wider carpulation on the way in which the regular fan has become prices, the uncomfortable truth is that the admission could probably be even more expensive and still produces. We, normies, we complain about the influencer zoo, then to double its strengths. It is the same contradiction that maintains Coachella occur and Art Basel Hashtagged in a thumb of his life. In this sense, open is both Groundbreaker and Winds: it sets the tone for the way sport can be reconditioned as a culture while reflecting the social economy in which we already live.

So it’s bad? From an angle, yes: the commodification of everything, from poultry to caviar to celebrities, can be considered to be rude or even obscene. But from another, it’s just the way we live now. Tennis is not immune to the elementary logics of virality, and if the price of cultural relevance is a cocktail of $ 23, a marked hooded sweatshirt, a meeting show on YouTube and a 20 -day schedule, which could be the guarantee of an agreement that we have already concluded a long time ago. The ball is still at stake, but somewhere between Queens and Indio, the US Open has become a festival in its own right: less on blows and reverse than on selfies, sponsorships and spreading.