Taking a family to a professional sporting event has become completely unreasonable.
By @niaagain · Money
Between dynamic ticket pricing, $45 parking, and $18 beers, going to a regular regular-season game now easily costs a family over $400. You used to be able to decide on a whim to sit in the cheap seats on a random weekend.
The full story
Remember when taking your kid to an MLB or NFL game didn't require taking out a small personal loan? I looked at tickets for our local ballpark recently because I wanted to take my nephew, and between two decent lower-bowl seats, $45 parking, two sodas, and two hot dogs, the cart hit nearly $340 before we even walked through the turnstiles. Back in the late 90s and 2000s, my dad would literally decide on a random Tuesday afternoon to buy bleacher seats with crumpled twenty-dollar bills from his wallet. It was accessible working-class entertainment. Now every stadium has private club lounges, dynamic pricing algorithms, and $18 craft tallboys designed to extract maximum cash from corporate accounts. People keep buying the packages so owners keep hiking rates, but regular families are basically priced out of building real fandom in person. We're trading lifelong generational fanbases for quarterly ticket-yield metrics, and it's ruining the soul of watching sports live.
How people voted
- Facts — 20% (8 votes)
- Depends — 34% (14 votes)
- No Way — 46% (19 votes)
Readers say “No Way” (46%) — 41 votes and 5 comments so far.
What people are saying
@reese — Took my nephews over the summer and my wallet is still crying, you are being so sweet to even try to take him out for special memories though!
@karaliterally — sneak a whole rotisserie chicken in your coat cowards
@vinceyk — I’d literally sit in my car tailgating the entire game and refuse to buy a single napkin inside just on pure spite.
@lanetbh — Get cheaper seats.
@guskay — the $18 warm draft really enhances the civic pride.
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