FLUSHING, N.Y. — On the eve of the 2026 U.S. Open main draw, during another jam-packed afternoon at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center grounds in Queens, N.Y., USTA CEO Craig Tiley said he expects tennis’ final Grand Slam tournament of the year to further swell as an entertainment mecca for children and adults alike.
“This will become tennis Disneyland,” he said Saturday during the tournament-opening press conference. “We’re going to have lots of opportunities for players and for young kids and for adults to come inside and have different experiences.”
Given the tournament’s “insatiable demand” and the ballooning success of Fan Week, which has solidified the U.S. Open as a three-week event, Tiley said future growth of the tournament will “not necessarily [come from] increasing the length of an event, but there’s more opportunity within the event” to develop activities and activations.
Tiley’s remarks come amid surging prices for main draw tickets on resale markets, underscoring the immense popularity of the tournament. Day session grounds passes, which retail at $65, were reselling for $321 on the official U.S. Open Ticketmaster on Saturday.
The skyrocketing price of admission to the tournament, coupled with the USTA’s unabashed courting of new audiences through creator content partnerships, have prompted scrutiny of whether the USTA, the non-profit in charge of the U.S. Open, is doing enough to ensure access to children and core tennis fans.
Tiley conceded that “one of our biggest challenges is the secondary market,” but declined to offer specifics in how the USTA might address it going forward. Tiley, who previously served as head of the Australian Open, was appointed the USTA CEO in February and assumed the role in July.
Nonetheless, Tiley emphasized that the U.S. Open offers 8 days of free attendance to the public as part of Fan Week, which concludes Saturday, and he said the USTA will seek to balance the financial demands of increasing prize money to players with the imperative to preserve access to children and families.
As of Saturday, the USTA had not published attendance figures for Fan Week in 2026, but according to Tiley, “we have had a record number of kids on the ground, the last the last 7 days, and I think it’s not going to take too much longer where this fan week becomes probably the most attended week.”