Carlos Alcaraz, Frances Tiafoe, Madison Keys, Naomi Osaka, Ben Shelton, and more of tennis’s biggest stars showed up for the U.S. Open’s mixed doubles tourney.
On a rainy, nasty Wednesday night in Queens, Arthur Ashe Stadium was packed under a closed roof despite the start of the U.S. Open, the final tennis grand slam of the year, not officially beginning until Sunday. The week before the start of the tournament has, for the last several years, been known as fan week, where admission is free to check out qualifying matches and other ancillary attractions to boost revenue and provide a taste of the action before the real party begins.
This year, the United States Tennis Association conceived a move: shifting the mixed doubles tournament, previously treated as a relative afterthought, from the final week of the U.S. Open, where top players focused on their singles matches, to the main event of fan week. Sixteen premier duos competed on the two main courts — Ashe and Louis Armstrong Stadium — in a shortened, TV-friendly format for a prize that increased from $200,000 to $1 million. It was an experiment to boost attendance, interest, and revenue during the Tuesday and Wednesday of a fan week that’s always been treated like an amuse-bouche to the main course of the tournament’s traditional fortnight.
Top players flocked to participate. We had teams featuring Carlos Alcaraz and Emma Raducanu, Frances Tiafoe and Madison Keys, Gael Monfils and Naomi Osaka, and Ben Shelton and Taylor Townsend. And those were just duos that were bounced in Tuesday’s first round.
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More than 20,000 fans filled Armstrong on Tuesday, and 78,000 fans were on-site during the two days of competition, per the USTA, despite Wednesday being a washout that postponed qualifying matches.
“I don’t think I’ve ever believed in an idea more than this,” Eric Butorac, the USTA’s Senior Director of Player Relations and Business Development, told Boardroom. “I really thought this was going to be something special.”
When the team of Jessica Pegula and Jack Draper stepped out onto the court to face the duo of Iga Swiatek and Casper Ruud in Wednesday’s first semifinal, Ashe was as packed and boisterous as it would be for a main event night match in the quarterfinals.
“It was super loud and it was not quite as comparable as when I played the final here last year with the roof closed,” Pegula, who lost last year’s singles final to Aryna Sabalenka, said, “but it was close. It was really fun. I don’t think the atmosphere could really beat it.”
Although Swiatek and Ruud came back to win in a thrilling tiebreaker, losing to the Italian doubles aces Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori, last year’s mixed doubles champs, in the final, the event was an unqualified triumph.
“The feeling of walking into an arena, 24,000 seats at night under the lights, seeing young kids jumping out of their seats at 11 p.m. when a match point is saved,” Butorac continued, “that makes you feel pretty special.”
The stars came out on Wednesday, with Lin-Manuel Miranda, Anna Wintour, Ronnie Chieng, Matt Friend, Billie Jean King, Ilana Kloss, Christie Brinkley, Andy Roddick, Devon Walker, and Michael Longfellow taking in the action for an event that’s largely been buried in the traditional tennis calendar.
“Andy Roddick commented to me,” Butorac recalled, “‘I never thought I would watch three hours of mixed doubles and be completely captivated in the stadium.'”
Although the event offered tickets for free, the sales of food, beverages, alcohol, merchandise, suites, and hospitality generated additional revenue, something that was not possible even a year ago, when some of tennis’ biggest stars were absent. The reimagined mixed doubles tournament was introduced in June, a month after the USTA announced an $800 million self-funded project to renovate Ashe, add a new level of suites, and build a new player performance center. Novel ideas and concepts, such as this mixed doubles tournament, would, over time, help pay for the upcoming improvements.
Butorac said, however, that the mixed doubles tournament and the renovations weren’t connected in any way, and this initiative was simply shining a light on men and women competing on the court together, like the NBA did at the 2024 All-Star Weekend with Stephen Curry and Sabrina Ionescu competing in a 3-Point Contest.
“I think it’s great to be honest, playing on a big court in front of people,” Draper said. “I love competing, and it’s such a good feeling to get the energy from the crowd. It’d be cool if all the slams did this.”
Not surprisingly, Butorac said he expects the U.S. Open to have a similar mixed doubles tournament next year. It checked off all the important boxes of a successful event. The matches were sold out and nationally televised. The crowds were authentically into it, and the packed concession lines provided a revenue boost to a tournament that was breaking financial records of attendance and sales on an annual basis. And the players loved the new format, too.
All in all, the mixed doubles tournament was a success on every front, and it should only be a matter of time before the three other grand slams follow suit as a new way to bring fans — and their dollars — further into the fold.
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