Hospitality boom and $100 chicken nuggets: how the US Open became obscenely expensive

Record crowds, premium seats and an unchecked resale market are transforming the self-styled people’s slam – and leaving ordinary fans fighting to get through the gates

It takes a truly exceptional affordability crisis to put Bill Ackman and Zohran Mamdani on the same side of the barricade. Yet this month the billionaire hedge fund manager and New York’s democratic socialist mayor found common cause over an unlikely grievance: the cost of getting into the US Open.