Families Can No Longer Afford To Go To Major League Baseball Games
When was a kid I was the only child of the 5 of us who was a Cubs fan. We were south siders, and there has always been a mutual dislike between the north side Cub fans and the south side White Sox fans. One day my mom, who was not a huge baseball fan said she would take me to a Cubs game. Just the two of us went, taking the elevated train across the city to Wrigley Field, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and jug of kool aid in hand. (In those days you could bring your own food and drink into the ballpark). It was a double header (another artifact from the past) and I was so happy to go to a big league game, just me and my mom. In todays world, I have no doubt we never would have gone. A bleacher seat at Wrigley Field today costs $109 each for an upcoming series against the Boston Red Sox
In 1985 a bleacher seat at Wrigley Field cost $3.50
A family of four wanting to go to see the Cubs play the Red Sox will pay 436 dollars to sit in the bleachers that night, not counting parking, food and drinks.
They do have nosebleed seats down the foul lines at the farthest point away from the field for $59 dollars apiece.
Working class families cannot afford anything like this, not even once a year.
Greed has run rampant in professional sports, baseball players make millions of dollars a year, even if they arent any good. A superstar will make tens of millions a year.
All of this makes no sense whatsoever, but there is free market capitalism for you.
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We are a crazy people.
Football is just as bad. For the Saints it is 50 bucks for up in the rafters of the superdome.
Decent seats are 4 to 5 hundred.
Inflated prices with rock concerts too.
One might be charged hundreds for mediocre seats and over $1,000 for premium floor seats.
I can afford it, but I choose to not be gouged.
I guess I was spoiled back in the day. Took in my fair share of concerts for 12.50 a ticket with general admission.
I am not going to pay 500 to go these days.
I have a 30 year old niece who is a traveling nurse currently living and working in Boston. She went to Phoenix to see Taylor Swift. I think the ticket was 450 dollars. A few weeks later she went with some different friends to see Taylor Swift in Houston. Another 450 dollars plus all the other expenses. I think she's nuts.
On top of that, the streaming providers block local games. So you have to get a premium subscription to even watch your local team.
The Cubs tv network , Marquee, does not have stand alone subscriptions , although they are supposed to be providing one later this season. In other words, to get the right to watch Cubs games you MUST either have cable tv (150 dollars a month more or less), or have a streaming service like FUBO, which carries the Cubs network and costs 80 dollars a month.
I know a few people who take their kids to minor league games. It is a decent size stadium with concessions and baseball and little kids dont know the difference between major league and minor league, and the cost is a fraction of a major league game.
Baseball is to slow and boring especially at the prices they want to see a game. I'd much rather watch Lacrosse.
My son always says if baseball needs a seventh inning stretch, maybe tha game should only go seven. I get it, but I will always love the game.
They will eventually price themselves so high people will loose interest
People not being able to go to live games will eventually cause TV ratings and money to go down
They are slowly killing the geese that lay the golden eggs, not just baseball but all big leauge sports
It’s worked it’s way down to the minor leagues and spring training as well. Both used to be very reasonable. Not anymore, not the games I’ve been to.
It makes me sad
Memories are made of this - when the Blue Jays started in Toronto I was a director of our local Variety Club along with an official from Labatts Breweries (the team's major sponsor) and I was able to obtain a set of 4 season's tickets in a perfect location, about half way up the lower stand right behind the catcher, just under the lip of the Skydome when it was open, and I retained them annually until MLB players went on strike in 1994 which so disgusted me I gave them up. The only reason they were affordable for me was because I brought my brother, my wife's best friend and a neighbour friend into the group so we all had and paid for a quarter of the tickets. When the season was to start and I was sent all the tickets, we hosted the others to sit down with us and choose, going round and round the table one game at a time, the games we wanted to share, first sets of 4 for a game and then trades of 2 seats between us. Everyone always got all the games they wanted to see. Because I had those tickets I personally witnessed live the most exciting moment in sports I have ever known - when Joe Carter hit the home run, coming from behind in the bottom of the 9th, that won the back-to-back World Series at home. These days the only baseball I get to see is when I watch movies such as The Natural, Major League, Field of Dreams, A League of Their Own, Moneyball, etc.