U.S. Open Ticket Sales Hit 'Unprecedented' Sales Upon Serena Williams' Retirement Announcement Tickets for the tennis tournament are flying after Serena Williams announced it could be her last time on the court.
By Emily Rella
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Serena Williams rocked the sports world on Tuesday when she announced in a Vogue essay that she would be retiring from the game of tennis following this year's U.S. Open in New York.
"I don't know if I will be ready to win New York," Williams penned. "But I'm going to try."
The U.S. Open, which begins on August 29 and runs through the finals on September 11, is a highly-coveted tennis tournament — for both players and fans alike — that is always the fourth (and last) Grand Slam tournament of each year, following Wimbledon which takes place earlier in the summer.
As expected, since this is set to be the last tournament where spectators can watch Williams hit the court, ticket prices have skyrocketed upon the announcement of her retirement.
"Since people have learned of the news, we've sold, as of 3 p.m. [Tuesday], 13,000 tickets to the Open, including 4,500 or thereabouts for opening night," Chris Widmaier, United States Tennis Association spokesman told the New York Post in what he is calling an "unprecedented" volume of sales.
Widmaier also revealed that the cheapest tickets for opening night on the 29th (seats are all in the upper deck of Arthur Ashe Stadium) typically retail for around $35 but some fans on Ticketmaster are attempting to resell them for an astounding $7,000.
Entrepreneur has reached out to the USTA for further information.
Still, it's not certain that Williams will even play on opening night as the players' schedules are not determined until a drawing on August 25.
Williams has won the U.S. Open six times and has a total of 23 Grand Slam singles titles.
"I don't particularly like to think about my legacy," she told Vogue. "I get asked about it a lot, and I never know exactly what to say. But I'd like to think that thanks to opportunities afforded to me, women athletes feel that they can be themselves on the court."
As of Wednesday morning, the cheapest ticket for the first round of Men's/Women's Singles on August 29 at Arthur Ashe Stadium, where Williams would be expected to begin the tournament, was $120.
