Sports World Feeling The Economic Pinch
By Wyatt Earp | October 8, 2008
Good thing I only go to professional hockey games to see the ice girls, like this fabulous babe from the Columbus Blue Jackets organ-i-zation.
Note to author Pablo S. Torre: The middle class was priced out of live sporting events years ago.
If you’re a typical sports fan — you know, the kind who worries about gas prices, tuition and the trade deadline — New York’s new stadiums might look as if they belong behind a boutique window.
In the Bronx looms the skeleton of Yankee Stadium 2.0, a coliseum with half as many bleacher seats as its predecessor but more than three times the luxury boxes. In Queens, the Mets traded Shea’s 20,420-seat hull of an upper deck for Citi Field and its 54 suites, burnished by leases priced firmly in the six figures. Even the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, future home of the Nets, will have 130 luxury seats in a venue designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry. And across the Hudson River? The Jets and Giants’ new Meadowlands Stadium, opening in 2010, has incorporated personal seat licensing — the process by which fans pay somewhere between $1,000 and $25,000 for the sheer right to buy season tickets. (It’s an investment opportunity!)
So what about this economic downturn, you ask? How can these teams upgrade their arenas so strikingly amid government bailouts and a subprime mortgage crisis and the declining dollar? (H/T – CNN SI)
Um, because they don’t give a rat’s ass about the fans, that’s why!
It never ceases to amaze me how loyal some people are to the sports teams that generally treat them with contempt. They raise prices like it’s no big deal to the average fan, and soon, the arenas are filled with businessmen who are more interested in making deals than the numbers on the scoreboard.
Normally, I couldn’t care less about this, since I make maybe one Flyers game every three years, but the fact that these teams expect the taxpayers to pony up for their stadiums truly galls me. The citizens of Philadelphia helped foot the bill for the Eagles and Phillies new digs, and most of us cannot aford to get in to see a game. It’s despicable.
It is also why I despise the Eagles and hope the Dodgers sweep the Phillies in the NLCS.
Topics: Ice Hockey | 6 Comments »
October 8th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
We took a tour of the Wachovia when they were building it. I remember watching the union guys tiling the luxury boxes and thinking this guy can build something he can’t afford to use. What a country.
October 8th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
It is endic with ALL sports Wyatt, it’s even percolating down to Division 1 colleges for football and basketball. A friend took his sone and an another boy to a Nationals game this fall, total cost over $200 for three tickets, pls hotdogs, etc. RIDICLOUS!
October 8th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
endemic… one of these days I’ll lern to spel…
October 9th, 2008 at 6:41 am
I remember seeing a Phillies game on TV, the stands were practically empty. I too thought that if ticket prices were a little more reasonable, more people would go to the games. But then again, when they were building the new stadiums with our money, I felt that a percentage of the ticket sales should benefit the city in some way, like put into the schools or housing for the elderly.
You’re right, they don’t give a damn about the fans. it’s all about the money.
October 9th, 2008 at 8:28 am
Boston has got to be the worst. (or damm near close…)
I was a longtime Bruins fan and I got priced out.
(No wait….., or was it trading Joe Thornton for Wayne Primeau that soured me…..)
October 9th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Captain – I’m sure they made it up in kickbacks, though.
Old NFO – Especially since the Nats suck!
Mrs. Crankipants – They’re packed to the gills now, since they’re in the playoffs. When they were playing terribly, no one cared. Typical Philadelphia.
Sully – Either one would have exploded my skull.