No One Wants to See the U.S. Open Women’s Final Without Serena

(Bloomberg) -- Serena Williams’s upset loss in the U.S. Open semifinals has driven the ticket resale market into a tailspin.

Demand is so low for Saturday’s women’s final that the showdown between Karolina Pliskova and Angelique Kerber is now the fourth-cheapest ticket of the entire two-week event. The $44 get-in, or cheapest listing, trails only a trio of midweek passes earlier in the tournament, according to data from aggregator TicketIQ.

“Serena at this current moment is the premier name in women’s tennis,” TicketIQ spokesman Chris Matcovich said in an e-mail. “Once she is out, it isn’t much of a surprise that prices drop this severely.”

Williams was upset Thursday night by Pliskova 6-2, 7-6 (7-5). A U.S. Open championship would have given Williams her record 23rd Grand Slam singles title, the most by any man or woman in the Open Era. Without that narrative, women’s final prices dropped more than 50 percent overnight, TicketIQ said.

The average ticket listing for the women’s final dropped 56 percent to $336 from $762 prior to Williams’s loss. The get-in price fell 63 percent to $44.

This happened last year as well. Just two wins away from claiming all four Grand Slam titles in a single year, Williams was upset by Roberta Vinci. Prices, built largely on the expectation that tennis history could be made, fell steeply.

To contact the reporter on this story: Eben Novy-Williams in New York at enovywilliam@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Janet Paskin at jpaskin@bloomberg.net, Rob Golum, Crayton Harrison