Naomi Osaka was about to serve at deuce in the second set of her opening-round U.S. Open match, but chair umpire Kader Nouni was looking somewhere else: a luxury suite where a group of attendees appeared to be staging a content shoot.
“Guys, please, in the suite behind me,” he said into his microphone. “Thank you guys, please take your seat.“
The interruption was brief, and Osaka went on to defeat Anastasia Zakharova in straight sets. Online, however, the moment’s momentum was just getting started. The footage circulated alongside other videos and images of creators taking selfies in the stands, drawing a variety of comments calling the spectacle “a South Park episode,” declaring that “social media was a mistake,” and observing that “The fatigue is real.”
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But given how major live events are marketed these days, was any of this really a surprise?
“The worst crowd experience I’ve ever had.”
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Creators have been on the U.S. Open’s invite list for years, documenting its fashion, food, celebrity sightings, and courtside culture for audiences who might otherwise have little interest in tennis. In 2025, the United States Tennis Association formalized that relationship by issuing media credentials to 54 creators. This year, it approved around 100, including 20 focused on food and beverages. That does not include creators invited separately by sponsors hosting parties, campaigns, and luxury suites.
USTA CEO Craig Tiley has said he wants the tournament to become “tennis Disneyland.” You can see how influencers fit into that vision. An all-day entertainment destination needs people to show off everything there is to do, wear, eat, and drink.
The hope is that someone who comes for the outfit videos and aesthetically pleasing Honey Deuces might stay for the tennis. Players understand the potential. Aryna Sabalenka told Front Office Sports that she loves creators bringing “fresh eyes” to the sport, while Daniil Medvedev said its growing visibility has “a lot more upside than downside.” Jessica Pegula has similarly credited influencers with helping tennis experience a “crossover Hollywood moment.”
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The tournament’s audience has grown alongside that strategy. The 2025 U.S. Open drew a record 1.14 million attendees, while the USTA said interactions across its social accounts increased from 2.3 billion in 2024 to 3.1 billion in 2025. Those figures do not tell us how much of that growth creators drove, but they help explain why organizers want to keep expanding their reach.
The awkward part comes when the content production starts interfering with the event everyone is supposedly there to promote.
In his SportsVerse newsletter, journalist Daniel-Yaw Miller wrote that he and a friend “could barely focus on the action amid a sea of influencers posing around us for endless fit pics and filming TikToks mid-point.” He had encountered a similarly creator-filled suite at a France-Sweden World Cup match earlier that summer.
Another spectator who posted footage under the TikTok handle @katticuspfinch told Inc. that photo shoots were happening around the stadium, including during active play. Having attended the tournament for more than a decade, she described this year’s crowd as “the worst crowd experience I’ve ever had.”
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The experiences reflects a broader shift in live sports. The NBA brought more than 200 creators to its 2026 All-Star festivities, while YouTube and FIFA offered behind-the-scenes access at this summer’s World Cup and organized the first YouTube FIFA Creator Cup. Just before the U.S. Open, the ATP held its first Talent Summit, bringing together creators nominated by major social platforms to discuss fandom and sports engagement.
There is plenty of money encouraging those relationships. According to the a 2025 creator economy report, U.S. spending on creator advertising is projected to reach $44 billion in 2026, up from $29.5 billion in 2024. Nearly half of the ad buyers surveyed consider creators a “must buy,” behind only social media and paid search.
For brands, the appeal is clear: access to established communities through people those communities already watch. For everyone forced to share both physical and digital space with the resulting campaign, the benefits can be harder to identify.
“My favorite thing about this sport was the silence.”
All summer long, I’ve been writing about influencer invasions. In the Hamptons, practically every desirable location seemed to become the site of another sponsored experience. A creator could begin the morning at a branded workout, attend a product launch in the afternoon, and end the night at a yacht party, producing several pieces of aspirational content along the way.
By July, businesses were protesting: A Nantucket shop hung a”No influencers” sign, prompting a heated debate over whether creators bring small businesses valuable attention or make those spaces less enjoyable by treating them like unrestricted sets.
Similar complaints have surfaced around filming in cafes and fitness studios, where other customers may find themselves maneuvering around equipment or appearing in footage they never agreed to be part of.
By the time the U.S. Open began, the brightly lit selfies were arriving in front of an audience already primed to be annoyed. The footage brought several grievances into one frame: conspicuous perks, disruptive behavior, and the feeling that something people cared about had become someone else’s backdrop.
For tennis fans, the interruption also touched a particular nerve. Silence during play is part of the experience. “I’m so overstimulated. Irritated. But mostly sad at what this tournament has become. My favorite thing about this sport was the silence.“
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One attendee described a couple arriving after Ben Shelton’s match had begun, photographing their Honey Deuces, looking at their phones, ordering a car back to Manhattan, and leaving before the match ended.
“Why even come and waste the seats, space, tickets, air, if you are showing up for one hour for a photo?!” she asked.
“The influencers are just doing their job”
Faulting (pun-intended) the people holding the phones leaves out everyone who invited them.
“Lowkey blame the brands though, the influencers are just doing their job,” one commenter wrote.
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There’s some merit to that argument. Creators may be the ones holding the phones, but they’re working within a system built by brands and event organizers. Sponsors including Moët & Chandon, Ralph Lauren, Maestro Dobel Tequila, and Grey Goose host guests in elaborate hospitality suites designed to generate attention beyond the court.
Still, the people in those booths should be able to maintain decorum — or at least be briefed on content creation rules before they start filming. As Osaka said in a press conference, “If you come to a sporting event, you have to respect the sport. I feel like it’s common courtesy to read up on the sport. Especially the etiquette.”
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Josephine Wong, general manager of creator commerce platform POP.STORE, agrees with Osaka. “Credentialing needs to come with guidelines: what to film, when it’s appropriate, and what level of access actually makes sense for the assignment,” Wong said. “The same way any newsroom would brief a reporter.”
“Nobody had defined what that suite full of people was supposed to be doing there, so they did the only thing they had a plan for, which was content about themselves,” she added.
Morgan Riddle, a fashion and lifestyle creator who built her following by documenting life around professional tennis with her now-ex-boyfriend Taylor Fritz, argued that the behavior is neither unique to the U.S. Open nor limited to professional influencers.
“Every single person who goes to the Open is going to take photos and take content, except maybe the older, die-hard, OG tennis fans,” she told Us Weekly.
Riddle described that impulse as part of “the state of the world,” pointing out that people increasingly document everything from sporting events to engagements and weddings with an online audience in mind, whether or not they are professional influencers.
In fact, one of the women swept into the U.S. Open backlash was not even there for work. As The Cut reported, one attendee who went viral for the timing of her selfie, Mriganka Chawla, was not in a brand suite and rather attended the match with her fiancé.
Regardless of whether every person swept into the backlash was actually an influencer, the U.S. Open recognized that the underlying behavior was a problem. After the incident, a prominent digital board instructed attendees to “refrain from the use of flash photography or other lighting.” The USTA also said it was reminding ticket holders and suite guests through emails, notifications, and signs around the grounds to avoid activities that interfere with play.
Credit: Screenshot: Threads, @patkiernan
Those are sensible steps, but ideally, guests should be properly briefed by brands inviting them before anyone switches on a light during play.
Wong does not believe bringing creators to the tournament was inherently a mistake. “The USTA credentialing close to 100 creators wasn’t the wrong call,” Wong told Mashable. “Every major sports property is fighting for attention from audiences who no longer discover events through traditional broadcast.”
For Wong, the problem is not whether the person holding the phone is a sports creator or a lifestyle influencer. What matters is whether the creator has something to offer beyond proof that they received an invitation.
“The ring-light disruption during Osaka’s match wasn’t really a creator problem, it was an access-without-purpose problem,” Wong said.
That’s why the guest list matters. Some of the most notable events in the industry right now are also the most targeted — at an Aug. 26 Hard Court party hosted by newsletter writer Jessica Schiffer, guests included former NCAA tennis champion and creator Ayan Broomfield, Hard Hitting writer Mel Kenny, The Sweat Lookbook writer Lee Glandorf, and other “sports x fashion” writers who gathered to discuss this growing intersection (as per Daniel-Yaw Miller of SportsVerse).
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Many tennis fans (and casual watchers) questioned whether the U.S. Open needs influencers at all when interest is already surging. ESPN’s 2025 coverage was the tournament’s most watched since 2022, with the men’s final audience jumping 82 percent and the women’s rising 50 percent from the previous year. The momentum continued in 2026, when every signature ticketed Fan Week event sold out and registrations for free Fan Access Passes climbed 66 percent.
That question feels even more urgent now that attending the tournament has become so expensive that even hard-core tennis fans can’t afford it. Grounds passes originally priced at $65 were reselling for more than $300 during the tournament’s first week, putting the experience out of reach for many fans.
“It’s maybe not the greatest thing for the real tennis fan because they’ve started getting priced out of the market,” former player Patrick McEnroe told Front Office Sports about the surge of influencers at matches. With demand already high and tickets increasingly unaffordable, it’s easy to understand why fans question who receives those coveted seats.
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Of course, I’m a digital culture editor — I know better than anyone how important influencer culture is to brands and the broader social media ecosystem we live in (whether we like it or not). At the U.S. Open, a good post can introduce someone to a lesser-known player, explain a confusing term, or convince them to try a Honey Deuce.
But there’s a difference between inviting people into tennis and turning tennis into a backdrop. Judging by this year’s overwhelming backlash, the U.S. Open may have discovered where that line is.