Sports: Draining Our Wallets One Ticket at a Time

By: Anthony N. Muccigrossi 

We have become a society that spends millions of dollars on sporting events, yet we leave our people to die because they can’t afford healthcare.

If you can kick, hit or catch a ball, you are guaranteed to draw in the crowd. When it comes time to raising money for worthy causes, such as medical research or combating poverty and world hunger, people hide under their bleachers.

According to the American Cancer Society, $160 million is spent on cancer research. In contrast, the NFL team valuations on the Forbes.com placed the New York Giants at number four, with revenue at about $353 million.

Looking at the numbers, we have spent $193 million more on the Giants, while cancer research organizations work tirelessly each day to raise money for research and other programs.

However, at least the sports fans who contribute all their money will be able to enjoy a cold beer at their favorite game. In the meantime, people are starving to death, dying of treatable medical diseases and defaulting on their loans.

While the cost depends on many factors such as sport, venue and game, you are still paying for a single ticket. For example, you can expect to pay more money for a Super Bowl ticket than you would pay for a preseason game. According to Statista, the average NFL ticket price for the 2014 season is $84.43.

And let’s not forget the extra amount of money you have to spend on a parking pass, which can run you an extra seven to ten dollars per game at the Red Bull Arena.

In retrospect, the Hollywood Reporter shows the average ticket price for a movie ticket to be $7.96.  In reality, you can attend about 10 movie screenings for the average price of one sporting event ticket.

When it comes to recent news in sports, dynamic pricing is driving in the left lane to sporting events and across many industries. Now, you might be unaware of this new form of technology. To be honest, get ready for an unfair ticket pricing system.

When sports enthusiasts say that they have to be in the best possible seat such as behind home plate or directly behind the end-zone, they are wasting their money.  No matter where you sit in the sporting venue, it will not change your team’s outcome.

With all the new forms of media such as Twitter, most sportswriters are live tweeting the games, including scores, statistics and injuries. The simple question is: why pay such expensive prices for tickets when you can watch the game live for free?

If you pay close attention to the rising ticket prices debate, you will notice the lack of commentary by coaches and employees of leagues or teams. Of course, an employee will not discredit his or her team or league.

Without the large amount of ticket revenue, they would be out of a career. On the flip side, people are depending on welfare, which may have been a result of spending thousands of dollars in fees, just to be able to buy season tickets.

Society needs to understand the Need verses Want principle. We don’t need to buy tickets to sporting events; we want to.

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