The 2026 US Open main draw starts today at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows. The USTA charges $65 for a day-one grounds pass. That same pass was reselling for about $363 on Ticketmaster, and opening-session stadium seats ran $327 to $466. The average "get-in" price for the tournament hit about $311 by mid-August, up from $262 a year ago, and resale listings for the men's final have topped $34,944 for a single seat. The USTA is a 501(c)(6) nonprofit whose stated mission is "Growing Tennis To Inspire Healthier People And Communities Everywhere."

1. The Price Betrays the Mission (Bill Ackman, Tennis Fans)

A nonprofit built to grow the sport is pricing regular fans out of it.

Bill Ackman called the price absurd. The Pershing Square hedge-fund manager posted that a $363 grounds pass made no sense, since "the USTA's mission is to promote the sport of tennis."

He got the number wrong, and said so. Ackman walked it back once he realized $363 was a resale price, not the $75 the USTA would actually charge him at the gate. He still argued the USTA should "find a way to avoid scalpers taking away the opportunity for more accessible ticket prices."

Fans stayed angry anyway. Tennis outlets said fans called the prices "scandalous" and "absurd." Their argument: a nonprofit shouldn't run a system that lets a $65-75 pass balloon past $300 before a fan can buy one.

2. But the USTA Isn't Setting That Price (Andy Roddick, the USTA)

Blame the resale market, not the organization that set the $65 face value.

Andy Roddick told critics to make a real argument. The former US Open champion said on his podcast that people were forming opinions "without mentioning secondary marketing and how the pricing actually works once it's out of the USTA's hands." He agreed the prices are too high, calling it "this sucks." But he said it's "categorically false" to call it USTA price-gouging.

The USTA's own price is $65. If the organization wanted to maximize revenue, it could have opened that grounds pass at market rate instead of $65 to begin with.

It also ran a record number of free days. Fan Week gave fans seven straight days of free grounds admission this year, the most in the tournament's nearly 150-year history.

3. Don't Blame Resale, Blame Ticketmaster (StubHub, Ticket Economists)

Resale isn't the problem — it's just moving tickets to whoever wants them most. The real target should be the primary-market platforms setting the baseline price.

Resale moves tickets to the people who want them most. Stanford economists Phillip Leslie and Alan Sorensen found in NBER research that ticket resale improves allocative efficiency, though roughly half of that gain gets eaten up by extra transaction costs and buyer effort.

StubHub just spent millions defending that exact model. The resale platform spent $3.4 million lobbying against a California bill that would have capped resale at 10% over face value. StubHub said it "exists to give fans access to live events on their own terms." The bill died in committee on August 13.

The real culprit gets off easy. Brian Berry, executive director of the Ticket Policy Forum, a coalition representing StubHub and other resale platforms, said capping resale alone "would let the Live Nation-Ticketmaster monopoly keep raising costs unchecked." Prices climb on the primary market too, he said.

Where This Lands

Ackman flagged the sticker shock, then admitted he'd misread the number. But the complaint stuck: fans think a nonprofit built to grow tennis shouldn't let tickets triple in price before the gate. Roddick and the USTA say that's a resale-market problem, not a USTA problem, and point to the $65 face value and a record run of free Fan Week days as proof. Economists and StubHub make a broader case: resale moves scarce tickets to the fans who want them most, and price caps just shift the same demand elsewhere — the real target should be Ticketmaster's primary-market pricing. That fight isn't unique to tennis. StubHub already spent $3.4 million defending it in Sacramento this year, and the resale industry won.

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