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 Williams, who dominates the women's game, suffered one of the
biggest upsets in tennis history when the unranked Italian sent her
packing with a gutsy, come-from-behind 2-6 6-4 6-4 victory before an
astounded crowd at Arthur Ashe Stadium court in New York.
The devastating loss meant that Williams, 33, lost her chance to
make tennis history as the fourth woman to win all four majors in
the same year, a so-called calendar-year Grand Slam. It also
postponed until at least next year her pursuit of Steffi Graf's
open-era record of 22 major titles.
But the remarkable turn of events also touched off a dramatic plunge
in ticket prices for the final, which will include two veteran and
well-respected Italian players, Vinci and her childhood friend,
Flavia Pennetta - but no Americans or marquee names, said Chris
Leyden, a content analyst for online ticket aggregator SeatGeek.
Leyden said the median price for tickets to the final on the
secondary market, which stood at about $550 before the start of the
tournament nearly two weeks ago, had risen to more than $1,500 by
Wednesday morning, the day after Williams defeated her sister Venus
in the quarter-finals.
Prices began to edge lower on Thursday and early Friday, he said,
but remained at nearly $1,200 at the start of the semi-final.
Those rates began to drop by the third set of the Williams-Vinci
match, Leyden said, as buyers and brokers began to sense that a
historic upset could be in the making that would spike the
top-ranked player out of the final.
By the time Williams had walked dejectedly from the court, her shot
at history dashed, ticket prices had plunged even more steeply and
within hours had fallen below $500, he said.
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"This is pretty much as dramatic as you're going to get, just
because there had been so much building up and prices just kept
rising and rising," Leyden said. "It really went from one extreme to
another."
Leyden said the ticket-price crash probably meant that some brokers
would take a loss on the final, although he added: "That's a risk
you take buying tickets for an event like this."
(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Sandra Maler)
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