Yearly, the US Open brings in stars together with Mariah Carey, Fats Joe, Queen Latifah, and, final yr, Alicia Keys from her Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Hell’s Kitchen, to amp followers up for the event. Through the free Fan Week’s Arthur Ashe Children’ Day, performers together with Justin Bieber, Rihanna, The Jonas Brothers, and Britney Spears have offered the soundtrack.
And transferring ahead, the Open is trying to proceed to hit the proper notes with followers.
This yr, with Mustard on the beat remixing Ace Frehley’s “New York Groove,” the US Open is giving its event two stadium reveals to entice followers: Placing Odesza in Louis Armstrong Stadium on Sept. 6 and the Swedish Home Mafia in Arthur Ashe Stadium after the Open on Sept. 11. Each reveals bought out almost instantly.
The Open first began holding reveals earlier than and after the event in 2024, and the newest live shows proceed the technique to create cultural gravity across the occasion—from its opening, free-to-the-public Fan Week to the finals and past.
Attendance spikes
Through the Open itself, which takes place this yr from Aug. 18 to Sept. 8, there’s little doubt that followers will embrace something the USTA throws their method. The Open trustworthy endure five-and-a-half-hour matches, 95-degree warmth, and the occasional climate delay regardless of the addition of lined surfaces lately. Because of this, attendance in Flushing Meadows reached 1,048,669 in 2024—in comparison with 737,872 in pre-pandemic 2019.
The crowds throughout Fan Week alone surged to 219,000 final yr, almost double the 115,355 who got here by the gates within the final US Open earlier than COVID-19. An obscure freebie when it first launched eight years in the past, Fan Week is seen by the USTA because the second when the Open is most accessible to new audiences.
“We have a look at the info of followers attending throughout Fan Week, and half of the individuals, based on our most up-to-date analysis, determine as individuals of coloration,” mentioned Nicole Kankam, managing director of professional tennis advertising and leisure for the USTA. “The US Open is already pretty numerous, however Fan Week itself is much more numerous, and we’re bringing in an entire new crop of followers who’re getting the prospect to see the very best tennis gamers up shut and private. There’s nothing else like that.”
For the Open, meaning including much more occasions to Fan Week, together with a Friday night time block celebration with DJs D-Good and Beverly Bond and a Monday silent disco. For the USTA and the tennis heart itself, it means contemplating new alternatives for Arthur Ashe Stadium, just like the Fortnite World Cup esports finals in 2019 or All Elite Wrestling’s AEW Grand Slam occasions from 2021 by 2024.
With the US Open extra usually crossing into different corners of tradition, and its services filling wants in Queens for occasions sometimes reserved for Manhattan’s Madison Sq. Backyard, Brooklyn’s Barclays Heart, Lengthy Island’s UBS Enviornment, or New Jersey’s Prudential Heart—all smaller than Arthur Ashe Stadium’s 23,771 indoor capability—the USTA’s group sees a possibility to market its facility past the tennis calendar.
“As a result of we cater to everybody, whether or not you’re a tennis fan or not. I like to inform individuals we’re a meals and wine pageant and, by the best way, we play tennis,” mentioned Chris Studley, managing director of occasion providers on the USTA Billie Jean King Nationwide Tennis Heart. “It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek there, nevertheless it’s so true, as a result of we’re looking for a brand new fan and introduce tennis to the oldsters that won’t have come out, and it is a method for individuals to search out our web site.”
A breath of recent air
If the tennis heart does develop into a live performance and leisure hub, it will possibly hint its upward trajectory again to the pandemic.
Studley famous that through the pandemic, as a uncommon outside facility with a roof in New York Metropolis, organizations started approaching the USTA to carry socially distanced occasions. Colleges all through the area requested them to carry outside graduations, and, as soon as mother and father and college students arrived on the facility, they needed to return again for the US Open. That, he mentioned, helped gasoline the enthusiastic post-pandemic response to Fan Week.
Additionally they acquired a glimpse at how straightforward it was to achieve the power. Followers have recognized for years to catch the 7 prepare into Willets Level. Nonetheless, when the Lengthy Island Railroad cease that served the tennis heart on sport days turned a full-time cease for a pandemic-era vaccination heart in 2021 after which, by public demand in 2023, it acquired even simpler to entry the positioning.
Now, with Main League Soccer’s New York Metropolis FC opening its Etihad Park close by in 2028 and a on line casino doubtlessly being constructed close to the Mets’ CitiField, there’s potential for much more customer visitors within the space—with a window for outside occasions from roughly April by mid-October.
“Persons are touring to occasions, individuals see Queens as a viable alternative to host occasions,” Studley mentioned.
Group sport
Very similar to its regional rivals at MSG Leisure or Brooklyn Sports activities and Leisure, the USTA has no scarcity of deep-pocketed model supporters keen to serve gaps within the native leisure panorama.
Kankam famous that sponsor J.P. Morgan Chase has beforehand backed the USTA’s Sounds of the Open live performance sequence, whereas noting that relative newcomers, together with Aperol and Dobel Tequila, might have an curiosity in attaching themselves to reveals on the tennis heart.
In the meantime, the USTA works intently with New York Metropolis Tourism + Conventions to see if there’s a possibility for it to host leisure related to bigger occasions (assume the 2026 World Cup, which holds its finals in New Jersey), bringing in manufacturing companions for the finer particulars. Having labored at Atlantic Information and MTV earlier than her time on the USTA, Kankam hasn’t a lot returned to these roots as they’ve returned to her and the tennis heart.
“Now we have seen the place people wish to be related to the US Open or, within the case of the Alicia Keys collaboration final yr, the place it was nice being referred to as to place a highlight on her musical and creating music,” Kankam mentioned. “Persons are taking a look at when the eyes of the world are on the US Open and taking a look at it as a spot to see and be seen.”
