Oura lands the US Open and pushes tennis into a new era of wearables
Oura has signed a five-year deal as the official wearable of the US Open and USTA.
After months of arguments about wearables in tennis, the biggest American tournament in the sport has thrown its weight behind the one that stayed out of the chatter.
Oura is now the official wearable of the US Open and the USTA, in a five-year deal that stretches well beyond the tournament itself, into coaching certification and league play.
At Flushing Meadows, the brand will be hard to miss. Every main draw player will receive an Oura Ring, with recovery education built into player areas, alongside on-court signage, broadcast integrations, and fan-facing activations centered on sleep and recovery. It will also have a role in the US Open’s forthcoming Player Performance Center, including naming rights to a wellness and recovery space when the facility opens in 2027.
The timing is notable. Through partnerships with players like Aryna Sabalenka and Maria Sakkari, and a very public effort from its CEO Will Ahmed, Whoop is the brand that’s made wearables a conversation the sport couldn’t ignore this year after the Australian Open insisted on players removing them. It’s also built its business in other sports around league-level deals like this one, often in a more visible way than Oura, although that seems to be shifting—Oura became the official wearable of US Soccer last week.
Now, in a bit of a plot twist, the smart ring brand is the first to partner with a Grand Slam, landing one of the biggest accounts in tennis. It’s not a total knockout for Whoop though—if anything, it lays the foundation for them to follow suit at other events. And, in line with the recent news that Roland Garros, Wimbledon, and the US Open would allow wearables during matchplay on a trial basis, both devices will be permitted on court in New York.
Oura has been making quieter inroads into the sport, including with a formal partnership with the Professional Tennis Players Association last year that’s now come to a close. “This new USTA partnership brings that work to the sport’s biggest American stage and lets us build on what we started with PTPA players,” Doug Sweeny, chief marketing officer at Oura, told Hard Court.
All of this momentum was built on groundwork laid out at the tour level: the WTA partnered with Whoop in 2021, and the ATP followed by allowing wearables in 2024. As is often the case with tennis, the rollout has been uneven and—compared to other sports—slow, but wearables are now part of the modern game that tennis can’t ignore. What the USTA has done, smartly, is step in and help shape what that actually looks like at its most high-profile event.
Rather than leaning into real-time performance data or pushing further into match play, Oura’s pitch centers on recovery, readiness, and long-term health. As the brand’s CEO Tom Hale put it in a release, “sleep and recovery are the invisible edge,” adding that the partnership is about bringing that idea to one of most impactful events in sport and helping players and fans understand “the connection between how they recover and how they perform.”
That approach may help explain why Oura landed the deal. While players are now largely allowed to wear these devices in matches, tennis hasn’t fully settled on how the data they generate during competition should be used, shared, or built into the sport’s broader commercial and content ecosystem. A recovery-focused product is easier to integrate without forcing that question. (The USTA tells me its too early to say if and how player data will be shared as part of its digital content.)
But it was also Oura’s broader, year-round commitment that was a key differentiator, according to a USTA spokesperson. Rather than focusing solely on the US Open, Oura positioned itself as a partner across its parent organization, from developing a recovery module for the USTA’s coaching certification to sponsoring its League National Championships and aligning around a shared focus on health and wellness at both the grassroots and professional levels. “This is a partnership that can have a demonstrative impact on the growth and vitality of our game for generations to come,” said the USTA’s chief commercial officer Kirsten Corio in the release.
At the same time, Oura’s sights in tennis are not limited to this partnership. The company tells me it plans to sign individual player ambassadors as part of its push into the sport. “There’s an incredible generation of talent coming up in tennis, and we’re already in conversations with players who are leaning into recovery and smarter training,” said Sweeny.
Ultimately, the Australian Open drama helped force tennis to take wearables seriously just as two of the category’s biggest players were showing real interest in the sport. The result is a new kind of commercial lever that goes well beyond the two-week tournament window and pushes tennis to catch up with how other sports think about health, performance, and fan engagement.
Oura may have scored the first big deal, but you can bet Whoop is up next.
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