10sBalls.com • TennisBalls.com
Home / Tennis News / US Open Celebrates 50 Years of Equal Pay With Historic Finals

US Open Celebrates 50 Years of Equal Pay With Historic Finals

Photo credit: USTA/US Open

The US Open celebrated 50 years of equal prize money.

Players and fans pumped up the party to record-setting levels.

The USTA today released some 2023 US Open stats that show record-setting attendance and digital growth to the tournament’s official website.

Among the stats, officials issued today:

On the Court

Nineteen-year-old American Coco Gauff captured the hearts of America by winning her first major singles title, defeating Aryna Sabalenka in front of a record women’s singles crowd of 28,143.

Gauff is only the third American teenager to win the US Open women’s singles championship, joining Serena Williams (1999) and Tracy Austin (1979, ‘81), and her gutsy, come-from-behind performances – three victories coming after losing the first set – had only been matched in the Open Era by Serena Williams in 1999.

Novak Djokovic won his record-extending 24th Grand Slam men’s singles title, defeating Daniil Medvedev. It’s the fourth US Open men’s singles title for the 36-year-old Serbian, who is now the oldest men’s singles champion in US Open history. No other player has won 24 Grand Slam singles titles in the Open Era (since 1968).

Americans continued to set the pace for the world at large on the court. Forty-three Americans competed in the men’s and women’s singles main draws at the US Open, capping a year in which the U.S. led all nations in singles main draw participants at every Grand Slam. Four Americans reached the second week of the main draw in both men’s and women’s singles, the first year for those numbers together since 2002.

Three U.S. men – 25-year olds Taylor Fritz and Frances Tiafoe and 20-year-old Ben Shelton – also reached the quarterfinals, the most at the US Open since 2005, while Shelton became the youngest American US Open men’s semifinalist since Andy Roddick in 2002.

Dutch wheelchair player Diede de Groot won her sixth US Open singles title, tying Esther Vergeer’s record, and her 12th consecutive wheelchair major, completing three consecutive calendar-year Grand Slams. The US Open Wheelchair Championships contested the first Wheelchair Grand Slam event where all three adult divisions – men’s, women’s and quad – had 16 competitors in the singles field and eight teams in the doubles field.

Record-Breaking Attendance

The US Open reached new heights for attendance in 2023, breaking its two- and three-week attendance records and becoming the first Grand Slam to welcome more than 950,000 spectators over a three-week period.

The US Open welcomed 957,387 fans over the 20 days encompassing the Main Draw and Fan Week, a near 8-percent increase over 2022. The US Open’s 2023 main draw attendance was a US Open record 799,402. All 25 sessions in Arthur Ashe Stadium sold out for the second year in a row.

The first six days of the main draw were the six highest-attended days in US Open history, while both the Men’s (28,804) and Women’s Championship (28,143) sessions were the highest-attended Championship sessions in US Open history. The record Fan Week attendance of 157,985 outpaced 2022 by 41 percent.

Digital and Social Growth

The US Open’s digital platforms, powered by IBM, had a record-setting year with traffic of over 15 million unique devices during the event’s three weeks, a 17-percent increase over 2022.

Total interactions and views across the US Open’s official social media channels on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok and Snapchat reached over 1.5 billion engagements over Fan Week and the Main Draw, an all-time high and 50-percent growth over 2022. More than 3 million unique devices viewed news articles on USOpen.org and the US Open app through the three weeks of the event, a 40-percent increase over 2022. The US Open’s Champions of the Court experience on Roblox had over 1.2 million total visits in its first 18 days. Worldwide Viewership