US Open tickets plummet ahead of men’s semi-final… to the price of LESS than a Honey Deuce cocktail!
Tickets for the highly coveted men’s semi-final afternoon session at this year’s US Open plummeted on resale sites to as low as $19 ahead of the tournament’s number one seed Alexander Zverev’s meeting with Karen Khachanov.
In the build-up to the final Grand Slam of the year, most of the headlines surrounding tickets to the event centred on their sky-high resale prices, with grounds passes for the first week of the US Open – with a face value of $65 – being sold on the secondary market for upwards of $300.
While the USTA is powerless to stop tickets being sold for miles more than their initial value, the tournament’s organisers do receive a ‘legal share revenue’ from seats sold on Ticketmaster, their official partner.
Weeks later however, the focus is on dropping prices, with the cost of a seat inside the Arthur Ashe nosediving on the eve of the first men’s semi-final.
While many fans have eagerly taken advantage of the deals for a seat in the upper levels of the 23,000-plus stadium, the pricier lower bowl of the US Open’s show court was visibly more sparse than organisers may have hoped for.
As per ticket resale site StubHub, via journalist Ben Rothenberg, the lowest prices for tickets for Friday afternoon were $19 and $21, with up to five sets of Grand Slam tennis available for the price of less than one of the US Open’s trademark Honey Deuce cocktails ($23).
Tickets to the men’s semi-final between Alexander Zverev and world No50 Karen Khachanov on the afternoon of Day 13 at the US Open dropped sharply
Tennis tournaments must contend with the absence in the latter stages of stars like last year’s winner Carlos Alcaraz
Tickets costing less than one of the tournament’s famous Honey Deuce cocktails were available hours before the first serve in the semi-final
Ticket prices on the secondary markets have dropped since last year across the board, with TicketData reporting that the average price of the cheapest ticket across both day and night sessions on Day 13 of the tournament has shifted from $319 in 2025, to $244 today.
Demand remains much higher for Day 13’s night session this year, which will feature two Americans vying to become the first home favourite to win a Grand Slam in 23 years – Ben Shelton and Frances Tiafoe.
Shelton and Tiafoe have been scheduled second on men’s semi-finals day despite Zverev having played his quarter-final on Wednesday rather than Tuesday with one eye on the demands of broadcasters’ primetime slot
But the dip in prices throws into relief how important the game’s biggest men’s stars, Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, have become to contemporary tennis.
While last season featured the young rivalry played out over three of the four Grand Slam finals, this year form and fitness has kept Alcaraz and Sinner from meeting in the biggest matches on tour.
Last year, both Alcaraz and Sinner played on Day 13, with the Spaniard beating the world No1 in their eventual final on Sunday. On host broadcaster ABC, their clash averaged 3million viewers, 82 per cent up on 2024.
This year, viewing figures have been more modest. The French Open, contested by Zverev and Flavio Cobolli, saw a 20-year viewing low, with just 1.3m viewers tuning in on broadcasters TNT and truTV.
Wimbledon viewers were also less tempted than 2025’s Alcaraz-Sinner meeting one year on, with BBC registering a peak at 5.95million for the Italian’s defeat of Zverev in four sets.
This was down on the previous year’s 8.3million and the 7.5million who watched Alcaraz’s second Wimbledon final against Novak Djokovic in 2024.
This US Open saw Sinner withdraw on the eve of the tournament as he continued to suffer from inflammation in his knee.
Alcaraz returned to competitive action in New York after four months nursing a wrist injury, but was knocked out in a five-set classic by Shelton – a quarter-final clash that would have sent viewership soaring through the roof, but for its early-hours finish at 3.34am on Wednesday morning.
