A Cautionary Tale

Wright Thompson at ESPN writes about the "Legends Seats" at the new Yankee Stadium which can go for as much as $2,500 a ticket. The gist of the story: big time sports is choking off its fan base in exchange for maximizing short-term profits.

The key paragraphs:

A recent poll discovered an unsettling trend emerging for the first time. American families whose household income is $75,000 or less now have zero dollars of discretionary income. According to Luker, that means about 75 percent of the country can never responsibly afford to go to a live professional sporting event. Franchises want them to be fans, to buy the gear and pull for their teams and watch the telecasts the leagues are paid billions for. But they don't need them to come to their stadiums. There are, right now, plenty of rich people who love games. The prices reflect that. The reason sporting events cost so much now, Luker's research shows, is because they are designed to be affordable only to those making $150,000 or more a year.

This wasn't always true. Ten years ago, it was cheaper to go to a baseball game than to a movie in half of the big league markets (take away parking at the game, and it was cheaper in every market). Today, there isn't a single city in America where it costs less to go to a major league game than to a movie. Everywhere we turn, we see examples of the collapsing middle class. This is where that issue lives in the world of sports, and it has predictable consequences.

"The lower the income," Luker says, "the less they're enjoying sports."

His August poll discovered a third of Americans are less interested in sports because of the declining economy. That's bad news, made worse by a problem he first noticed in 2004 and which has continued since: For the first time, the largest number of sports fans aren't 12- to 17-year-old boys. The baby boomers are the group that shows the greatest increase in a love of sports, and they'll be dying soon.



You can damn the WNBA all you want, but there's one truth: you don't have to take out a second mortgage to see a WNBA game. It might not cost as little as a movie, but it's pretty damn close to one.

A Tough Ticket

The haters love to mock WNBA attendance, but Clay of the Clay and Robbie Blog found that getting tickets to the Dream/Sparks game wasn't so easy:

I search the ticket office and found there were indeed tickets left. To my thinking, I could wait and grab the $5 off coupon from Sherie and I would be in the door for $5. At 12:04 no tickets were available. OMG I thought. What will I do? How did I left myself pass the opportunity to see Pat Summitt?

...

We parked and headed to the Box Office. OMG at all the Knoxville buses letting fans off. I swear it looked like Tennessee on football game day. I have never seen so much orange. Anyway, we walked on and one of the fans told us that Pat Summitt had bused all the fans down for free that wanted to come and had tickets. Is she not precious? How sweet.

Dream Games and Seating

In putting together a "how-to" collection of links, I want to mention briefly the cost of attending the game, and ask the question, "what are the best seats for the cost?"

First, it's quite possible to get good seats if you're willing to wait for them. Sometimes, the Dream does a promotion, particularly if the game is going to be on ESPN2 and the Dream want to sell out the game - you can get "all tickets $10" or freebies or some such thing. However, I don't think there are any more Dream games that are going to be on ESPN2 this year.

Second, you can get good seats in what I call the $10 - $20 - $30 range. The $10 dollar seats are generally seats on the upper level (see the seating chart.) Those are the seats in dark blue with sections in the 200s. I've never sat in the upper level seats, but I know that there are people up there and they are cheering.

The $20 seats are behind the backboards. Which means that you'll get to see one team close up and personal each half - but it will be a different team as the teams change baskets at halftime. I don't know what that experience is like, either.

The $30 seats are closer, either closer to the player baskets or at cattycorners to the court. I've sat in the $30 seats before - the "off corner ones" - and I found it quite pleasant.

Anything above $40? That's up to you. For $100 a ticket you're basically at courtside. Try getting that at a Hawks game.

What kinds of experiences have commenters had with seats at Philips? Where are the best places to sit at Philips? What kind of "seat protocol" is there?

Our Happy Cult

More on our astonishing second win of the season later.

Interesting comment from Frisco Del Rosario in his Livejournal entry of 10 July 2008 at 1:23 am:

...which brings to mind those poor slobs whose business was scalping tickets outside Key Arena.

The WNBA fanbase is a cult. We weirdos don't need to buy tickets when walking up, because we've had 'em all year. (The dilettantes are big groups -- 5th grade girls teams plus guardians -- who deal with group ticket salespeople.) In the unusual case of an out-of-town cult member who doesn't have a ticket -- me last weekend -- I waited for a non-professional to unload a ticket s/he couldn't use, then relied on knowing people inside who could get me closer to the floor. In fact, I was surprised that professional scalpers tried working an WNBA game at all -- you'd think with a bit of experience, they'd know it's difficult to give WNBA tickets away for nothing (a friend had to persuade her mother to take mine).

I've only been following the WNBA for one year - this year - but those comments have the ring of truth. To my fellow cult members out there, let's just say I'm happy to be drinking the grape Kool-Aid -- and I hope that if I'm ever in Sacramento, a fellow cultist can get some tix for me.

$4 Tickets for Weeknight Games

Right here. The offer is that for a limited time, you can get these tickets from Ticketmaster by entering the key word "GAS".

Oh yeah. That works for me. But are we talking about petroleum fuel or gastric upset?