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The BNP Paribas Open is the latest tournament to significantly increase its mixed doubles prize money to attract singles stars. While it didn’t attract the sport’s A-tier players, it was still able to lure in some notable names.
The tournament at Indian Wells in California announced the draw for its third annual mixed doubles event Monday night, which included Venus Williams, Maria Sakkari, Karen Khachanov, Stefanos Tsitsipas, and Leylah Fernandez. The event starts Tuesday.
The purse is $1 million, nearly three times as much as last year when the prize was $370,000. It was $150,000 in 2024, the inaugural year of the event.
This year’s mixed doubles draw has 16 teams, up from 12 last year and 8 the previous year.
Philippe Dore, the tournament’s chief marketing officer, told Front Office Sports last month he hoped the increased prize money would attract more stars to the event.
“We want to attract good players, for sure, for sure, for sure,” Dore said. Other notable players joining mixed doubles include Belinda Bencic, Jelena Ostapenko, Andrey Rublev, who also participated in last year’s mixed doubles.
The strategy is similar to the 2025 US Open which drew most of the men’s and women’s Top 10 after increasing the purse for their controversial mixed doubles event. The 2025 US Open purse was $2.36 million, with the winning duo taking home $1 million, five times more than in 2024.
The US Open scheduled mixed doubles ahead of the Grand Slam main draw as a way to bring fans to Flushing Meadows earlier than usual.
The BNP Paribas Open already has a one-night-only mixed doubles exhibition before the main draw—which has attracted some of tennis’s biggest names through its $200,000 prize—so the official mixed doubles event is meant to keep more tennis fans at Indian Wells during the tournament’s second week.
“Part of our strategy is to have more tennis, because as we know, as we go into the second week, we start losing [players],” Dore says. Most of the aforementioned names joining mixed doubles have already been eliminated from the singles draw, giving them the flexibility to play at mixed doubles before heading across the country for the Miami Open next week.
The additional tennis matches are also a way to put more matches outside of Stadium 1 and 2 at Indian Wells, which are not accessible with a grounds pass. Ground pass tickets have access to the other seven stadiums at Indian Wells.
This is the first year the tournament did not allow general admission tickets access to Stadium 2, which has led to online criticism.
“They should fix this night session ticketing situation on Stadium two, because it looks pathetic to have a Medvedev-Baez match empty at 9.30pm,” journalist José Morgado tweeted Monday with a photo of a nearly-empty stadium.
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