Overview
- Organizers repackaged the traditional qualifying period as a commercial “Fan Week” with mixed doubles, exhibitions and star practice access, and the format has drawn unusually large crowds and heavy media attention.
- Fans have reported practical failures on site, including very long lines for activations and giveaways, dirty seats in Arthur Ashe, and intermittent scoreboard outages on outer courts that made following matches difficult.
- Free ground passes and promotional items such as 40,000 Spider‑Man comics created huge queues and have been resold online, and secondary‑market markups for tickets have pushed prices well above face value.
- Public pressure over affordability and resale prompted limited USTA and city responses, including a capped $100 New York City resident ticket allocation that sold out quickly, but critics say those measures are only partial fixes.
- The clash between casual visitors drawn by celebrities and purist fans focused on tennis has soured some patron experiences and raises a clear choice for organizers between growth-focused promotion and preserving the traditional match-day experience.