$54.6 Million Through Flushing Meadows, and the Whales Finished Down $947,666: the Full 2026 US Open Ledger

Two weeks, two champions, and a book that came within a rounding error of breaking even. The whale room put $54,637,103 through the US Open singles draws and took $53,689,438 back out. That is 1,570 tickets and a net loss of $947,666, or about 1.7 per cent, on the largest tennis book tail.bet has ever recorded.

Zverev took the title the market said he would

Alexander Zverev beat Ben Shelton 6-3, 7-6(7-2), 5-7, 6-2 in a little under three hours. He led by two sets, lost the third when a loose twelfth game handed Shelton the break, and then took the fourth for two. It is his second major of 2026 after Roland Garros, his first US Open, and it makes him the first German man to win here since Boris Becker in 1989. His head-to-head record against Shelton is now 6-0.

Shelton leaves with the runner-up cheque of $2.8 million and the weight of a statistic nobody in American tennis wants to keep carrying. He was the first African-American man in a Grand Slam final since MaliVai Washington at Wimbledon in 1996, and the first in this one since Arthur Ashe in 1972. No American man has won a major since Andy Roddick in 2003, and that is now twenty-three years.

The final drew 26 tickets and $1,228,746, and most of it has not graded yet. The two biggest are both still open: $302,000 on Zverev at 1.66 and $165,125 on Shelton at 3.90, placed within an hour of each other. A third, $164,128 on over 41.5 total games at 1.71, is also pending; the match produced exactly 42.

What has settled tells the usual story. $57,164 on Zverev at 1.05, placed once the fourth set was effectively decided, returned $60,163 for the sort of margin that only makes sense at this size. The Shelton money died in order: $38,000 on him to take the fourth set at 5.75, $37,000 on him to cover a 1.5-set handicap at 4.10, and $25,000 on him outright at 6.00, all placed after he had taken the third and all dead inside forty minutes.

The women’s final was the one that paid

Elena Rybakina beat Aryna Sabalenka 6-4, 5-7, 6-2. Sabalenka, the two-time defending champion, saved two set points at 5-5 in the second to force a decider and then won two games in the third. Rybakina takes her first US Open and third major, and arrives at world number one for the first time, the first Kazakhstani player to hold it. Sabalenka’s run at the top ends at 99 weeks and the three-peat goes with it.

This is the one final where the whale room got it right. 16 tickets, $452,511 staked, $521,544 returned, a profit of $69,033 against a market that had Sabalenka at -145. $100,000 on Rybakina at 2.45 returned $245,000 and was both the biggest ticket on the match and the correct one. Three more followed it home: $20,000 at 2.35 for $47,000, $19,194 at 2.27 for $43,570, and $13,263 at 2.45 for $32,570.

The Sabalenka money went the other way, $25,635, $23,400 and $16,410 all on her at around 1.60, all gone. Two shapes of bet stand out either side of that. $50,000 on there being a tiebreak at 2.20 lost, in a final that went 6-4, 5-7, 6-2. And the best-priced winner of the night was absurdly specific: $15,000 on Sabalenka to win the twelfth game of the second set at 4.20, returning $63,000, which is exactly the game she won to take that set 7-5.

Where the fortnight was actually won and lost

The headline number hides how lopsided the two draws were. The men’s singles finished almost exactly flat, 1,103 tickets and $39,679,482 staked against $39,607,339 returned, a loss of $72,144 on nearly forty million dollars. The women’s draw carried the damage: 467 tickets, $14,957,621 staked, $14,082,099 back, down $875,522.

Almost every large winner across the fortnight came from in-play set and game markets rather than from picking a champion. The biggest ticket of the entire tournament was $585,290 on Alex Michelsen to win the second set against Frances Tiafoe at 1.75, which returned $1,024,258 in a match Michelsen went on to lose from two sets up. Behind it: $490,000 and $426,574 on Karen Khachanov to take the first set off Alexander Blockx, for $833,000 and $695,569, in a quarter-final that ended in a retirement. $444,950 on over 19.5 games in Pegula against Navarro returned $694,122. The $435,000 four-leg ticket at 2.04 with over 39.5 games in the Tiafoe-Shelton semi-final returned $886,764.

Set against those, the outright money was a graveyard. $380,180 on Learner Tien at 1.55 was the largest loser of the fortnight. The whales backed Carlos Alcaraz at every price from 1.40 out to 3.05 on the night Ben Shelton put him out at three in the morning, and only the largest of those tickets, $309,490, escaped by cashing out at exactly the stake.

Eighty tickets and $3.3 million still have not settled

The tournament is over and the book is not. 80 tickets carrying $3,305,512 are still ungraded, including both of the big ones on the men’s final. That is not unusual here, but the scale of the lag is: the three tickets on Taylor Fritz against Francisco Cerundolo, $75,000, $75,000 and $74,993, have now been pending for eight days on a fourth-round match that finished on 5 September. Fritz lost in five. We do not grade a bet before the book does, so they stay open on our board, and the $947,666 figure above will move when they close.

The doubles finished cleanly. Christian Harrison and Neal Skupski beat Kevin Krawietz and Tim Puetz 6-4, 7-6(8-6) in the men’s, and Katerina Siniakova and Taylor Townsend beat Ashlyn Krueger and Robin Montgomery 5-7, 6-0, 6-2 in the women’s, completing the career Grand Slam as a pair.

Attention now moves to the AFL preliminary finals, where the whale board has stayed remarkably quiet, and to an NFL season that has suddenly started producing seven-figure weeks. Every graded ticket from the fortnight is on the US Open hub, the men’s singles board and the women’s singles board. Before you tail any of it, check the bonus board. 18+ · gamble responsibly.