By Richard Pagliaro | @Tennis_Now | Thursday, August 15, 2024
The 2024 US Open has an ambitious viewership goal and several policy changes coming. Here’s what you need to know.
Photo credit: US Open/USTA
Tennis is a numbers game.
The 2024 US Open will bring some meaningful numbers.
More: US Open hosts first final fan festival
The Major at Flushing Meadows offers prize money of $75 million, a new tennis record, including $100,000 for first-round participants.
The main draw begins on Monday, August 26. A total of 894 matches will be played in 13 different US Open competitions over a period of 18 days.
After the record-breaking 2023 US Open, the USTA plans to take the final Grand Slam of this season to the next level.
Organizers have set an ambitious goal for the 2024 US Open: to attract one million fans during the entire three-week event, which includes Fan Week and US Open qualifying, which begins next week.
This would make the Open the first Grand Slam tournament to attract one million fans – a feat that was almost achieved last year.
Novak Djokovic’s Chasing history and his 24th Grand Slam title and 19-year-old Coco Gauff’s Her dramatic run to her first major title captivated the US Open fans who streamed through the gates of Flushing Meadows last summer.
The 2023 US Open set two- and three-week attendance records and was the first Grand Slam to welcome more than 950,000 spectators in three weeks.
The US Open welcomed 957,387 fans during the 20 days of the main draw and fan week, an increase of almost 8 percent over 2022.
This month, more fans have more space to roam.
In a Zoom call with about 75 media representatives on Wednesday, USTA executives announced some policy changes, including “controlled movement” in all stadiums at the US Open.
This means that US Open fans are allowed to walk around between matches, so if you want to quickly use the bathroom or buy a beer, you can return to your seat at the end of matches, whereas fans have traditionally only been allowed in after the changeover.
Here are some of the policy changes for the 2024 US Open announced by Tournament Director Stacey Allaster, USTA President Dr. Brian Hainline and USTA CEO Lew Sherr in yesterday’s Zoom call.
One million fans
The USTA has added some ticketed events during Fan Week and is launching the Finals Fan Fest, which will offer expanded site passes including official viewing parties at Louis Armstrong Stadium for the women’s and men’s finals and additional seating for the big screens at Fountain Plaza.
Officials expect to attract more than 200,000 fans during US Open Fan Week, which officially kicks off this Sunday evening with a concert by Dierks Bentley. If that happens, it’s likely that the number of fans will exceed 1 million during the entire three-week event.
At the 2023 US Open, all 25 sessions at Arthur Ashe Stadium were sold out for the second year in a row, and both the Men’s (28,804) and Women’s Championship (28,143) sessions were the best-attended Championship sessions in US Open history.
The question: Is bigger always better in tennis?
If you’ve ever sat in the top rows of Arthur Ashe Stadium, you know that the cheap neighborhood isn’t always conducive to spectating. The court can resemble a postage stamp and the ball can look the size of a pebble from the top of Ashe Stadium. While Arthur Ashe Stadium is a wonderful spectacle, especially at night, if you want to sit in the upper tier and watch tennis, it’s too big, right?
The new events represent new revenue streams and new opportunities for the USTA to sell more tickets to the Open, which is the economic engine of its year-round programs.
While it is positive to welcome so many fans, New York is coming off one of the hottest Julys in recent history and you don’t want to put fans at risk of health and give them a few days of sweltering heat and sweltering humidity. In the August heat, it is concerning to see elderly fans among the thousands. There have been a few medical incidents where fans have been treated for illnesses and then released from the 2023 US Open.
Getting more people through the gates doesn’t necessarily mean fans are closer to the game, especially when sitting in the cavernous Ashe, where there can be a separation between the court and the crowd on the upper deck. Still, there’s nothing quite like the energy and electricity generated by New York fans, so it will be exciting to see how the new US Open Finals Fan Fest draws in its debut.
Old ball, please
The US Open women’s tennis ball will have a familiar bounce.
At the US Open, the Wilson Regular Duty felt ball will again be used for the women’s events.
At the 2023 US Open, for the first time in years, the women played with the slightly heavier Wilson US Open Extra Duty felt ball instead of the Wilson US Open Regular Duty felt ball.
The change in the probation period was made in response to the request of several star players, including Iga Swiatek, and calls on the tournament to make the change in 2023.
The Open stuck to it, although some players developed arm problems, including the 2023 Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova and 2023. Roland Garros finalist Karolina Muchova, who played in the semifinals with a black cuff around her right arm, while others felt that the rally benefited the hard rackets the most.
Allaster, tournament director of the US Open and former CEO of the WTA, said the decision to return to the Wilson Regular Duty ball was “made by the WTA, its players through a survey and the Player Council… The athletes have been playing with the Wilson Regular Duty ball all summer in the lead-up to the US Open.”
Life After Midnight: Late Night Match Policy
In the city that never sleeps, there will be no curfew during the Open, but the umpire will be given the authority to move late-night matches to a public field.
“If the second game of the night is on Ashe or the last one is on Armstrong and those games are not over by 11:15 p.m., the umpire has the discretion to postpone the game,” Stacey Allaster said. “It depends on a lot of variables, like if the broadcast team is ready, if we have a ball team, etc. But we expect it to be a possibility.
“The athletes know that if we get into this position, the referee will make the decision.”
New umbrella directive
To provide relief to players and fans, the US Open has changed its roofing policies due to the extreme heat.
When the retractable roof over Arthur Ashe Stadium was first introduced at the US Open, officials stated that they would not use the roof to protect against the sometimes whipping winds that can come from nearby Flushing Bay.
Due to the extreme heat, officials were prompted to partially close the roof to provide some shade during the 2023 US Open.
The new roof policy means that the tournament referee can partially close the roof at his discretion either before play or at the end of a set.
“We have now made it a rule so that the athletes know when the roof is opened and closed and when not,” said Allaster. “Depending on the extreme heat, the referee can close the roof and partially shade the court before the match or at the end of a set. The roof is only closed if bad weather is threatening or it is raining.”
Tablet technology
For years, players and coaches have argued that decisions such as “not-ups” and “net touches” should be reviewable.
A total of eight courts will offer video reviews at this US Open. In addition, “roaming tablets” will be used at the Open when rules violations occur. Under this new rule, the umpire or Grand Slam supervisor can review the incident that led to a rules violation on a tablet to assess “the situation of a code violation.”
“We think that’s really important in the crucial moments of the competition,” Allaster said. It’s a rule that will be welcomed by players like Denis Shapovalov, who was banned from the game in Washington DC earlier this month for verbally abusing a heckling fan of the opponent.
