Posted on 09/23/2013 2:39:00 PM PDT by nickcarraway
How much would you pay to see a Super Bowl?
Last week, the Journal's Matthew Futterman reported on the National Football League's plan to raise ticket prices for its upcoming New York/New Jersey Super Delicious Possibly Freezing Outdoor Snowfall (or Perhaps Sleet) Bowl. Actually, raise is too generous a word. Spike would work. Laugh uproariously as they hit you over the head with a sock full of $100 bills isn't bad, either. The best tickets at Met Life stadium for SB XLVIII next Feb. 2 may sell for as much as $2,600—more than double the rate of the highest-priced seats at last season's Super Bowl in New Orleans. However, I do believe this comes with free use of most stairwells and rest rooms.
You don't need me to tell you that this is a ridiculous amount for one seat. For $2,600 you could fly yourself and a friend to Paris and stuff your face at Le Chateaubriand. You could charter a sailboat in the Caribbean, stare into the night sky and contemplate the meaning of the Jacksonville Jaguars. You could buy 10,400 25-cent gum balls. You could also not spend the $2,600 on a ticket to a football game, which is the advice my prudent father-in-law would surely give.
SNIP
The more I thought about it, the more I wondered why football should be charging anybody to go to this game. The Super Bowl is inarguably a massive global extravaganza—a hundred million domestic television viewers, many million more worldwide, a complimentary halftime sing-along with a contemporary entertainer. In the United States it is essentially a holiday. Everybody watches the game. Sponsors and networks shove each other out of the way to write big checks and get involved. The game is a license to print money. Tickets at the stadium
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
So his plan is to deprive the NFL from selling a valuable product and the “winners” from actually owning what they win.
Not sure what you mean. They make an awful lot of money for not being capitalists. In my lifetime Pete Rozelle, a marketing wizard, and the owners dethroned baseball and made the NFL the dominant spectator sport in America.
Taxpayer-funded stadiums, an exemption from anti-trust law, revenue-sharing, barriers to entry, a reward for doing poorly (via draft pick), and tax breaks . . . yeah, that’s capitalism all right.
The things you decry are what make the NFL so successful. A small town like Green Bay really can win the Super Bowl and they have fans all over the country. In contrast, the small market teams in baseball play at a huge disadvantage to get to a World Series and that fact depresses attendance, viewership and revenues.
I’m decrying the fact that you call it “capitalism,” nothing else.
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