August 27, 2008--Take Me Out To The Shell Game
Things are spinning out of control. The center isn’t holding. What next?
Not to worry. This is not a rant about the state of the economy or world. It’s about the price of tickets to baseball and football games.
I’ve been a lifelong fan. My first love was the Brooklyn Dodgers; then after they abandoned us for literally greener pastures in LA, the maturer me became infatuated with the Yankees; while all along I faithfully rooted for the New York football Giants. I even stayed with them after they moved across the Hudson when, though they then resided in New Jersey’s swampy Meadowlands, they oxymoronically continued to call themselves the New York Giants.
At the risk of sounding nostalgic, I remember being able to slip into the bleachers of old Ebbits Field for a quarter. Please do not ask me what that would be in constant 2008 dollars—postage stamps still cost 3 cents and for a nickel you could ride the subway all day—those cheap seats Ebbits were a bargain that a poor kid like me could afford.
But next year the Yankees and Giants and even the Mets will open glittering new stadiums, and wait until you hear what they are going to charge fans to attend. The New York Times reports that though none of the teams are asking for one’s first-born son in payment for the price of admission, giving him away for a pair of tickets could turn out to be a bargain. (Article linked below.)
Are you sitting down? I mean at home, not in one of the new ballparks because I suspect that if you have any equity left in your house you’d have to get another sub-prime mortgage to pay for that seat.
It’s costing the Mets more than $800 million to build what will be called Citi Field—for Citibank, get it; $1.3 billion, with a B, for the new Yankee Stadium, which has no corporate sponsor since the Yankees already are corporate enough; and a whopping $1.6 billion, and counting, for the Giant’s new pleasure dome. Like Kubla Kahn’s in Xanadu, it will for certain have, as the current one does, a dedicated place where unpoliced besotted fans during halftime can harass women while trying to get them to take off their sweaters.
So to pay for this extravagance, really to underwrite the cost of packing all three places with private corporate boxes and suites, as in the larger society that soaks the middle class to subsidize the ways of the wealthy, the team owners are passing along much of the building costs to their up-to-now faithful fans who have stuck with them through some thick and much thin.
But the good news is that these Bleacher Creatures are not taking this lying down. They are mounting protests and threatening not to renew their season tickets. Typical Mets’ seats will jump from about $88 on average to $175. Tickets for the best seats in the old Yankee Stadium this year are going for $1,000 each but next year in the new ballpark they will cost you $2,500. That’s for one seat. Others there, for season ticket holders, will range from $135 to $500 a pop.
Most outrageous is what the Giants are up to. Not only have their prices risen higher than the stadium’s new roof, but in order to be eligible to ante up to $700 for a ticket to home games, season ticket holders will have to pay from $1,000 to $20,000 for something the ownership is calling “seat licenses”!
First you pay your $20,000, then you pay $800 for each of eight seats for the Giant’s eight home games--$6,400 if my math is correct.
John Mara, co-owner of the Giants in nonplussed—he blithely announced the other day that they have a waiting list of 130,000 eager to get in on the action. Let them eat cake. Or an $8.00 beer.
A guy from Manhattan, who has held four terrific fourth-row seats at the old Yankee Stadium, which currently cost $220 each, will see them rise to $650 apiece in 2009. He says, “It’s going to cost me $2,600 to sit there on a rainy day in April to watch Kansas City.”
His math is right. What he didn’t say, considering how my hapless Yankees are playing this year, is that that’s what it will cost to watch them get shut out.
Not to worry. This is not a rant about the state of the economy or world. It’s about the price of tickets to baseball and football games.
I’ve been a lifelong fan. My first love was the Brooklyn Dodgers; then after they abandoned us for literally greener pastures in LA, the maturer me became infatuated with the Yankees; while all along I faithfully rooted for the New York football Giants. I even stayed with them after they moved across the Hudson when, though they then resided in New Jersey’s swampy Meadowlands, they oxymoronically continued to call themselves the New York Giants.
At the risk of sounding nostalgic, I remember being able to slip into the bleachers of old Ebbits Field for a quarter. Please do not ask me what that would be in constant 2008 dollars—postage stamps still cost 3 cents and for a nickel you could ride the subway all day—those cheap seats Ebbits were a bargain that a poor kid like me could afford.
But next year the Yankees and Giants and even the Mets will open glittering new stadiums, and wait until you hear what they are going to charge fans to attend. The New York Times reports that though none of the teams are asking for one’s first-born son in payment for the price of admission, giving him away for a pair of tickets could turn out to be a bargain. (Article linked below.)
Are you sitting down? I mean at home, not in one of the new ballparks because I suspect that if you have any equity left in your house you’d have to get another sub-prime mortgage to pay for that seat.
It’s costing the Mets more than $800 million to build what will be called Citi Field—for Citibank, get it; $1.3 billion, with a B, for the new Yankee Stadium, which has no corporate sponsor since the Yankees already are corporate enough; and a whopping $1.6 billion, and counting, for the Giant’s new pleasure dome. Like Kubla Kahn’s in Xanadu, it will for certain have, as the current one does, a dedicated place where unpoliced besotted fans during halftime can harass women while trying to get them to take off their sweaters.
So to pay for this extravagance, really to underwrite the cost of packing all three places with private corporate boxes and suites, as in the larger society that soaks the middle class to subsidize the ways of the wealthy, the team owners are passing along much of the building costs to their up-to-now faithful fans who have stuck with them through some thick and much thin.
But the good news is that these Bleacher Creatures are not taking this lying down. They are mounting protests and threatening not to renew their season tickets. Typical Mets’ seats will jump from about $88 on average to $175. Tickets for the best seats in the old Yankee Stadium this year are going for $1,000 each but next year in the new ballpark they will cost you $2,500. That’s for one seat. Others there, for season ticket holders, will range from $135 to $500 a pop.
Most outrageous is what the Giants are up to. Not only have their prices risen higher than the stadium’s new roof, but in order to be eligible to ante up to $700 for a ticket to home games, season ticket holders will have to pay from $1,000 to $20,000 for something the ownership is calling “seat licenses”!
First you pay your $20,000, then you pay $800 for each of eight seats for the Giant’s eight home games--$6,400 if my math is correct.
John Mara, co-owner of the Giants in nonplussed—he blithely announced the other day that they have a waiting list of 130,000 eager to get in on the action. Let them eat cake. Or an $8.00 beer.
A guy from Manhattan, who has held four terrific fourth-row seats at the old Yankee Stadium, which currently cost $220 each, will see them rise to $650 apiece in 2009. He says, “It’s going to cost me $2,600 to sit there on a rainy day in April to watch Kansas City.”
His math is right. What he didn’t say, considering how my hapless Yankees are playing this year, is that that’s what it will cost to watch them get shut out.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
6:56 AM
1 Comments:
The pricing formula for all three stadiums is anti long term fan...and
skewed for their corporate clientele.
This may come back to haunt them when voter backing is needed for future changes or improvements. But my beef is really with New Jersey fans' willingness to have the Giants and Jets completely ignore their state. Maybe you can see NY from the new Ferris Wheel at the Meadowlands but the stadium is in New Jersey.
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