When the US Open kicks off in New York later this month, there will be a new kind of content engine running behind the scenes, amid the crowds, sponsor booths, and famous food spots. Creators will film their outfits, try the food, and give followers a peek inside brand lounges and premium seats, sharing the whole experience of being at the Open with millions of people who aren’t there. Brands are spending tens—and sometimes hundreds—of thousands of dollars to make sure they’re part of that content.

During the US Open, influencer management company DBA sees three to four times more brand interest and partnership opportunities for its tennis-related talent than at other tennis events, says Kirstin MacGowan, vice president of talent. “Brands are putting more money into culturally relevant sports moments,” she says, “and the US Open’s appeal goes far beyond tennis.”

A private suite for one US Open session can cost anywhere from $50,000 to $150,000, says Alex Georgy, founder and CEO of BWB Agency, and that’s before you add agency fees, design, hospitality, content production, or talent. Paying multiple creators or celebrities to show up and post can add another six figures, pushing a bigger campaign into the several-hundred-thousand-dollar range.

These activations are getting more elaborate too. Three to five years ago, Georgy says, a brand might have just invited a group of guests to a suite. Now, hospitality is often paired with paid talent, custom-designed spaces, and professional content production meant to reach far beyond the people actually there. “The suite used to be the experience,” she says. “Now it’s often just one part of a much larger campaign.”

Underneath that investment is the cultural value of simply being there. For creators, attending a Grand Slam can signal something to their audience beyond just liking tennis; for brands, the appeal is partly about linking themselves to that prestige. “Being at Wimbledon or the US Open now says something,” Georgy says. “It signals access, taste, and that you’re moving in certain circles.”

But brands aren’t the only ones trying to use that access to reach the millions of people outside the gates. While they’re still the main way many influencers get into tennis’s biggest events, tournaments are increasingly building their own relationships with creators, from giving out media credentials to commissioning content. As more money and attention pour into this space, the challenge is how to make the most of the Grand Slams’ cultural appeal without watering down what made that access so desirable in the first place.

The new economics of access

For brands, creator hospitality around tennis can range from a ticket or suite invite to a fully paid trip with flights, hotels, dinners, and other experiences. Both official tournament sponsors and brands with no formal tie to an event use the calendar as a chance to host talent, MacGowan says.

Creators don’t necessarily need big appearance fees to make those invites appealing either. “A lot of them just really want to do it for the content, because it’s incredibly culturally relevant,” MacGowan says. For someone whose job depends on constantly producing material for an audience, a Grand Slam can offer days of fashion, food, travel, celebrity, and lifestyle content, on top of the tennis itself.

The US Open is especially well-suited to this growing creator scene. Its New York location puts it close to much of the talent brands want to work with, and the event itself is, as Georgy puts it, “loud, social, celebrity-heavy, and very brand-friendly.”

The tournament is also building its own relationships with creators more and more.As a way to reach their audiences directly. In 2025, the US Open introduced its first formal content creator credential, giving media accreditation to 54 creators. Together, that group generated more than 5.5 million social engagements, according to the United States Tennis Association (USTA).

“They’re getting the same access as journalists,” says Jeanmarie Daly, director of media and photo operations and special events at USTA. Credentialed creators can use the media center and work areas, attend general press conferences, and ask players questions.

The program initially focused on creators whose audiences go beyond tennis, with an emphasis on areas like food and beverage, fashion and lifestyle, health and wellness, music, and entertainment. This year, Daly says, the tournament also plans to expand opportunities for creators interested in covering the sport itself.

Separate from its credential program, the USTA partners directly with creators whose expertise, storytelling styles, or audiences can complement its own social output. Recent partnerships have included Sportsball explaining the US Open’s revamped mixed-doubles format and Righteous Eats covering the food and beverage options on-site.

“We’re not looking to directly replicate anything that existing creators already have a unique lens and an audience for,” says Jonathan Zipper, senior director of social media at USTA. “It’s not always about getting the US Open brand out in front but, rather, growing interest in tennis as a whole.”

At the Australian Open, those relationships have been part of the tournament’s strategy for more than six years and have become increasingly formalized. Tennis Australia brought management of its creator program in-house from an agency two years ago and now employs a full-time staffer dedicated to the strategy year-round. The number of influencers and creators attending the tournament reached 260 this year, up 64% year-over-year, while their content generated 348 million impressions, a 95% increase. Like the US Open, the Australian Open also treats selected creators much like traditional media: this year, 50 received media passes and were subject to the same rules as journalists.

“We think that the word media, or the concept of media, is evolving,” says Brie Stewart, director of content at Tennis Australia. “It’s not that papers, radio, TV news, all that kind of stuff don’t matter. It just means that there’s another media source that we’re adding to the mix.”

That approach reflects a broader effort to position the tournament as more than a sporting event. Stewart describes the strategy as part of the “festivalization of the Australian Open,” with fashion, beauty, gaming, food and beverage, family, and music all forming part of the experience around the tennis.

The hope is that those additional entry points can ultimately lead people back to the sport itself. One recent invitee was Australian creator Jerry Davis, whose content had largely focused on AFL, basketball, and baseball. After receiving a media pass, Stewart says, he became interested enough in tennis that he began covering it independently and attending junior club tournaments.

“For me, that just ticks all the boxes of what we’re trying to achieve,” she says. “It is our duty to get as many people loving the sport as we possibly can.”

Data suggests that creators can provide that bridge. UTA, DBA’s parent company, found that “Avid Creator Fans” — people who actively follow and engage with online creators — are 19% more likely to be interested in the US Open if their favorite creator covers it.

Preserving what makes the access valuable

The same cultural expansion that makes the Grand Slams attractive to creators and brands also creates a tension: their value depends in part on each tournament remaining distinctive.

That is particularly evident at Wimbledon, where tradition, aesthetics, and exclusivity arCentral to the event’s appeal, Georgy explains, “The best Wimbledon content tends to feel a little more restrained and polished. If it feels too obviously commercial, it sticks out.” Unlike the US and Australian Opens, Wimbledon doesn’t currently offer a dedicated creator credential. Instead, it has tried smaller initiatives, like teaming up with YouTube to bring creators on-site and organizing activities such as playing on grass courts or preparing strawberries before the tournament.

Anastasia Karanikolaou, Alix Earle, and Ashtin Earle during day nine of the 2026 Wimbledon championships. Photo: Getty Images

Will Giles, managing editor of content at Wimbledon, says creators can “bridge that gap” between the tournament and people who might not immediately understand its appeal. But the goal is to have them translate the experience rather than reshape it around themselves. “We want Wimbledon to still feel like the hero of it,” Giles says. “It’s more about bringing people here to experience the magic of Wimbledon, rather than it necessarily being about, ‘Oh, there’s an incredible name here.'”

That approach doesn’t mean sticking only to people who already fit neatly within Wimbledon’s existing audience. The tournament is deliberately working with creators in areas like fashion and food, using them to reach growth markets such as India. “Wimbledon is unsurprisingly quite well saturated for tennis fans, and in the UK,” Giles says. When looking for new audiences, “the more unusual the better.”

For Giles, protecting Wimbledon’s culture doesn’t mean resisting change. “Wimbledon is an incredibly traditional event, but it embraces innovation as much as possible,” he says. “This event turns 150 next year, but we are very cognizant of the need to evolve with the times.”

TikTok content

There is a limit, however, to how far any tournament can become optimized for content without weakening the experience creators are there to capture. “The risk is that the tournament starts to feel like a backdrop for content rather than the reason everyone is there,” Georgy says. “But when it’s done well, creators can help make tennis feel more current and accessible, as long as the content still reflects what makes each tournament distinct.”

That balance matters to brands, too. The cultural cachet they’re trying to borrow depends on the tournament maintaining enough of its own identity for the association to mean something. If every Slam becomes simply another hospitality backdrop, part of what makes access valuable disappears with it.

What is all this attention worth?

As brands devote increasingly large budgets to creator campaigns around tennis, the return on that investment can be difficult to quantify. MacGowan says brands look at metrics including earned media value, impressions, and engagement, while Georgy points to a broader mix of content performance, cultural relevance, and relationship-building.

UTA’s data suggests sponsored content tied to the US Open can outperform creator campaigns more broadly. According to the company’s Creators data team, creator-sponsored US Open content generates 48% higher impressions than typical creator-sponsored content. MacGowan says brands often approach tournament activations primarily as an awareness play, using the experience to build an association between themselves and the lifestyle surrounding the event.

Georgy adds that brands tend to evaluate a broader combination of outcomes: “Did the content travel, did it feel premium, did people talk about it, did it help the brand show up in the right cultural context?” Some of the value may never appear in an engagement report. “Sometimes the relationships built in the suite are just as important as what gets posted publicly,” she adds.

For tournaments, the calculation is different but similarly difficult to reduce to a single metric. Tennis AustraliStewart says the platform tracks impressions, engagement, and sentiment, but the bigger goal is figuring out whether someone starts watching tennis, goes to an event, or picks up a racket because a creator introduced them to it. The USTA is making a similar bet by giving access to people whose audiences go far beyond the tennis world.

As that attention becomes more valuable, though, there’s a growing push to control who can make money from it. At the US Open, MacGowan explains, brands that buy suites or tickets but aren’t official partners can face limits on using tournament branding in sponsored content from creators. That can push companies to build campaigns around a tennis-related moment instead of the tournament itself—like a “get ready with me for a tennis tournament” video—and she notes that creators have had to take down content featuring protected US Open imagery in the past.

“If you’re not going to be an official sponsor, you’ve got to rethink your strategy here,” she says.

These restrictions protect something that’s becoming more and more valuable. Official sponsors might be paying not just to be linked with the tournament, but for exclusive rights within their category. That means a competitor can’t simply buy hospitality, bring in a bunch of creators, and use the US Open as the backdrop for its own campaign.

This situation shows how blurry the lines around these events have gotten. A creator might show up one day as a brand’s guest and the next day have media credentials. A tournament can host a sponsored campaign while also creating its own content with creators. Brands want the cultural credibility that comes with access, tournaments want the audiences creators bring, and creators are increasingly playing a role that sits somewhere between guest, marketer, and media.

“I almost think it’s an expectation now that this is just a part of the sport,” Daly says. “To a certain extent, a lot of fans consider themselves content creators and influencers.”

For a sport that spent decades selling the prestige of getting inside the gates, the opportunity is no longer just about being there. It’s about finding ways to share what makes being there special with the millions of people watching from outside.

Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs about the booming influencer economy in tennis covering everything from the basics to the business side

Beginner Questions

1 What exactly is the influencer economy in tennis
Its the business side of social media within the sport Instead of just winning matches players and content creators make money by building large online audiences They earn income through brand sponsorships ad revenue and merchandise turning their personal brand into a business

2 Im not a pro player Can I still be a tennis influencer
Absolutely You dont need a ranking to have influence Many successful tennis creators are coaches fitness experts or just passionate amateurs who post entertaining trick shots gear reviews or funny commentary on the pro tour Your passion and consistency matter more than your forehand

3 How do tennis players actually make money from social media
There are a few main ways
Sponsored Posts Brands pay them to feature products in their posts
Affiliate Links They share discount codes or links to buy gear and earn a commission on sales
YouTube Ad Revenue They earn a cut of ads shown on their longform videos
Merchandise They sell their own branded clothing or accessories directly to fans

4 Why are brands suddenly so interested in tennis players
Tennis has a unique global reach and a highincome fan base Unlike team sports players are individual brands which makes them easier to market Plus the sports calendar is yearround giving brands constant exposure The rise of shortform video has also made the sport more visually appealing and accessible to younger audiences

5 Is it more important to win matches or have a big following
For the top 100 players winning is still the biggest driver of prize money and major sponsorships However for players ranked outside the top 100 a large following can often be more lucrative than their winnings on the court A player ranked 200th with 2 million followers will likely earn more than a player ranked 80th with 10000 followers

Advanced Business Questions

6 How do losing players still get major sponsorship deals
Its all about engagement and marketability Brands look for players who