Is it really so hard to get tickets to the U.S. Open? It might not be if you know when to look.
The tennis tournament has been quietly releasing hundreds of tickets at face value during the past few weeks. The random ticket drops come with no formal announcement and at a time when the frenzy for tickets has led to a resale market with markups of hundreds or thousands of dollars. Tickets for the year’s final Grand Slam tournament went on sale in May, and most of the seats appeared to quickly sell out.
On Wednesday afternoon, about 250 face-value tickets were available for the evening session, which was set to begin at 7:30. It featured a men’s singles quarterfinal match between the world’s No. 1-ranked player, Alexander Zverev of Germany, and Botic van de Zandschulp of the Netherlands.
Earlier this week, the tournament released some face-value tickets for the men’s semifinals on Friday. By Wednesday those tickets were gone, most likely because two American men, Frances Tiafoe and Ben Shelton, are slated to play against each other in the evening match.
A United States Tennis Association spokesman said these ticket drops were standard practice across the industry.
“We hold a number of tickets across a variety of sessions for various reasons — player requests, partner allocations, miscellaneous needs, etc. — that we release periodically when we know they’re not being used,” the spokesman said in an email.
The spokesman declined to say how many tickets had been released during the tournament or how often it happened.
Amanda Sivils, 44, bought four tickets in May on the day they were released to the public for a special trip for her mother, who has cancer. She traveled from California and had tickets for seats at the very top level of Arthur Ashe Stadium. At the time she felt lucky to get them, given how quickly they sold.
“You’d try to click on ‘tickets,’ but they would disappear,” said Ms. Sivils, who called it “frustrating” to hear that the tournament had released more tickets for some sessions.
Kevin Kreindel drove from New Jersey with his wife and some friends, having also bought tickets as soon as they were released.
“Probably not fair,” Mr. Kreindel said when told about the recent ticket drops. “People overpay for them on websites, big time.”
Mr. Kreindel said that from now on he would check regularly for more face-value tickets during the tournament.
Those in the know keep an eye out for “blue dot tickets,” a reference to the color used on Ticketmaster’s seating charts. The seats with blue dots are sold by the event, while resale tickets have pink dots.
A week before the start of the tournament, Marc Ajel, 41, found a face-value ticket for the day session on Sept. 2 for $655. Given the location, the seventh row from the court in Section 119, he thought it was a steal. He felt even better about his purchase when he saw that resale tickets for seats in the same row were going for more than $1,300.
Resale prices dropped for certain matches during the tournament. Mr. Ajel was able to find a front-row ticket for the night session at Louis Armstrong Stadium on Sept. 2 for $290.
He was surprised to hear that the U.S.T.A. said the ticket drops were the random consequence of releasing holds. He thought the tournament had a “more noble motive” to make tickets more accessible.
“For someone like me who’s coming from out of town and will be there for specific days, that system is totally frustrating,” Mr. Ajel said. “But I can totally see how it’s dope for locals.”
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