The Rise of Branding at the U.S. Open

For fans of the sport, the U.S. Open is one of the pinnacles of competitive tennis every year, a time for the greats of the sport to convene in New York City for some of the most thrilling matches you’re likely to see.

But tennis players and fans aren’t the only people with a deep connection to the tournament. In recent years, high-profile sponsors and advertisers have been drawn to the Open, seeking a highly concentrated audience there. A new report from Brian Braiker at Ad Age explores how things reached this point, and what it might mean:

[Mercedes] is one of 21 official sponsors at this year’s U.S. Open (which concludes Sept. 8), up from 19 last year. In 2018, the two-week-long event generated $65 million in sponsorship deals alone (tickets and broadcasting pulled in $120 million each; concessions did $30 million), according to a report in Forbes that was independently confirmed by Ad Age.

There’s plenty of consistency at the highest levels as well: the likes of Emirates Airlines and American Express have been sponsors since 2012.

Braiker notes that the increasing global popularity of tennis has upped its marketability. “From stalwarts Serena Williams, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic to exciting newcomers Naomi Osaka, Coco Gauff and Zhe Li, tennis is reaching a global audience at an unprecedented scale,” he writes.

Readers of David Foster Wallace, who saw this coming in the mid-1990s, will likely be less than surprised at this. For everyone else, it’s one more step in the direction of the commercialization of sports, for good or for ill.

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