Serena Williams and Carlos Alcaraz Pair Up at the U.S. Open

Serena Williams and Carlos Alcaraz will play together in the U.S. Open mixed doubles event, a two-day competition running Tuesday through Wednesday at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.

Serena Williams and Carlos Alcaraz will play as a team in the mixed doubles competition at the U.S. Open, a two-day event staged Tuesday and Wednesday at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows. The pairing, first reported by Forbes Business, puts one of the most decorated players in the sport's history alongside its current box-office men's star, in a format the United States Tennis Association has deliberately rebuilt to attract exactly this kind of entry.

A format engineered for names, not for doubles specialists

Mixed doubles at the majors had long been a schedule filler: a draw played out on outside courts, largely by doubles specialists, while the singles tournaments consumed the attention and the broadcast windows. Compressing the event into a Tuesday-Wednesday block ahead of the main singles draw changes the calculus for a singles player. Two days is a commitment a top-ranked competitor can absorb without disturbing preparation for the fortnight that actually pays the ranking points.

That is the design intent, and the Williams-Alcaraz entry is the proof of concept. A player of Alcaraz's standing does not enter a traditional two-week mixed draw. He can enter a 48-hour one. And Williams, whose competitive appearances have become rare enough to be events in themselves, is precisely the sort of name the shortened format was built to draw back onto the court.

What the USTA gains commercially

The USTA is a non-profit that funds American grassroots tennis largely out of what the U.S. Open generates, so the tournament's commercial performance is not an abstraction — it is the organisation's operating budget. Three revenue lines stand to benefit from a marquee mixed pairing.

• Ticketing. The days immediately before the singles main draw are traditionally the softest of the tournament calendar. Putting a headline act into that window converts low-yield sessions into ones with genuine secondary-market pull.
• Broadcast. Mixed doubles has historically been filler inventory for rights holders. A Williams-Alcaraz match is a promotable, standalone programming unit, which is a materially different product to sell.
• Sponsorship and hospitality. Court-side signage and suite inventory price off expected viewership. A pairing with global recognition on both sides of the net — American and Spanish, generational and contemporary — widens the audience geography that sponsors are buying.

None of those values have been disclosed, and the USTA does not publish session-level economics. But the direction is not ambiguous: an event that previously struggled for attention now has a headline that travels beyond the tennis press.

Two audiences in one pairing

The commercial logic of the partnership rests on the fact that Williams and Alcaraz do not overlap. Williams's audience is built on more than two decades of visibility that extends well past sport — into fashion, venture investing and broadcast. Alcaraz commands the younger, streaming-native audience that governing bodies across every sport are chasing and mostly failing to reach.

Pairing them is a demographic arbitrage. The USTA is not adding two fan bases together so much as using each to introduce the other to a product neither was previously buying. That is a familiar play in sports rights — the mixed-generation exhibition, the crossover event — but it is unusual to see it embedded inside a Grand Slam's official competition rather than bolted on as a separate exhibition.

The risk in leaning on star pairings

There is a cost to the redesign, and it falls on the doubles professionals whose entry into a major has been squeezed by a format that now favours singles ranking and name recognition. That tension is real and will follow the event. A tour discipline that loses its dedicated practitioners loses the depth that makes it a competition rather than a showcase.

The second risk is durability. A format that depends on marquee entries is only as strong as the marquee available in any given year. If the biggest names decline to enter — because of injury, scheduling or simple disinterest — the same two-day block becomes a thinly attended midweek session with a broadcast slot to fill. The USTA has solved this year's problem. It has not obviously solved next year's.

The wider backdrop for sports rights

The pairing lands at a moment when live sport remains one of the few categories of programming that reliably assembles a mass simultaneous audience, and rights holders are paying accordingly. Governing bodies have responded by manufacturing more premium inventory out of existing calendars — shortened formats, in-season tournaments, exhibition weekends — rather than adding weeks to already crowded schedules. The compressed mixed doubles event is that same instinct applied to tennis: take a fixture that already exists, restructure it so the biggest names can plausibly show up, and sell the result as new.

For context on the broader market backdrop against which these media and sponsorship deals are struck, U.S. equities closed the most recent session higher. The S&P 500 tracker (NYSEARCA: SPY) finished at $765.72, up 0.41% on the day from a previous close of $762.60, as of 20:00 GMT on Friday, 21 August 2026. The Nasdaq 100 fund (NASDAQ: QQQ) closed at $713.44, up 0.35%, and the Dow 30 tracker (NYSEARCA: DIA) at $532.22, up 0.89%. Media and consumer-brand equities take their cue in part from advertising conditions, and marquee live sport is where a disproportionate share of that spending now concentrates.

What to watch through the week

Three things will tell you whether the experiment worked. First, resale pricing on the Tuesday and Wednesday sessions relative to comparable pre-main-draw days. Second, whether the broadcast partner gives the mixed final a standalone promoted window rather than folding it into general coverage. Third — and this is the one that determines whether the format survives — whether other top singles players follow Alcaraz's lead into the draw in future years, or whether this proves a one-off assembled around a single unrepeatable pairing.

Whatever the result on court, the entry list has already done its job. A competition that most casual fans could not have named a week ago now has a fixture people will look up.

Frequently asked questions

Who is Serena Williams playing with at the U.S. Open?

Serena Williams will partner Carlos Alcaraz in the U.S. Open mixed doubles event. The pairing brings together one of the most decorated players in the sport's history with the current men's game's leading draw, in a competition the USTA has restructured to encourage entries from high-profile singles players.

When is the U.S. Open mixed doubles event held?

The mixed doubles competition runs Tuesday through Wednesday at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, New York. Condensing the draw into a two-day block ahead of the singles main draw is intended to make participation practical for players whose primary commitment is the singles tournament.

Why did the USTA change the mixed doubles format?

The shortened two-day format lowers the time cost of entry for singles players, who previously would not commit to a draw spread across a full fortnight. The result is a competition that can attract recognisable names, creating promotable broadcast inventory and stronger ticket demand in what are traditionally the tournament's quieter early sessions.

How does the USTA make money from the U.S. Open?

The USTA is a non-profit organisation that funds American grassroots tennis largely from U.S. Open revenue. The main lines are ticketing and hospitality, domestic and international broadcast rights, and sponsorship. Session-level economics are not publicly disclosed, so the specific financial impact of any single match is not reported.

Who loses out from the revamped mixed doubles format?

Doubles specialists are the group most affected. A format weighted toward singles ranking and name recognition reduces the number of entry slots available to players who build their careers in doubles, which has drawn criticism that the event risks becoming a showcase rather than a genuine competitive discipline.

How did U.S. markets close ahead of the event?

As of the last trade at 20:00 GMT on Friday, 21 August 2026, the S&P 500 tracker SPY closed at $765.72, up 0.41% from a previous close of $762.60. The Nasdaq 100 fund QQQ ended at $713.44, up 0.35%, and the Dow 30 tracker DIA at $532.22, up 0.89%.

Sources

• Serena Williams, Carlos Alcaraz To Team Up At U.S. Open — Forbes Business

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