August 27, 2008
New New York stadium tix will cost a bundle
The New York Jets made news yesterday by announcing that they won't force season ticket holders in the upper deck of their new stadium to pay for the right to buy tickets. While all Giants season ticket holders will have to pony up between $1,000 and $20,000 for "personal seat licenses" if they want to buy seats at the new building when it opens in 2010, as will Jets fans in the lower level, the cheap seats for Jets games will still be on a pay-as-you-go basis - if seats that cost between $95 and $125 apiece can still be called "cheap."
The New York Times' Richard Sandomir polled fans of the Jets and Giants - as well as the Yankees and Mets, who aren't using PSLs but are hiking ticket prices at their new digs next year - and found that, no surprise, many of them are hopping mad. A selection of fan comments:
- "You're asking me for money and giving me nothing in return. I won't be sharing in the revenues or get any perks.”
- "Here I am, buying a stadium for [Giants owner] John Mara. I'd love to see him issue a registration statement like a stock offering that would disclose information we don’t know. This is a greedy ploy with the only benefits going to them.”
- "The Jets and Giants want me to be an equity partner without any upside."
- "If the tickets were still in my name, I'd tear them up. If they couldn’t afford to finance that stadium on their own, they shouldn’t be leaving Giants Stadium.”
To be fair, PSL buyers will get something of value: They can resell the PSL to another sucker - sorry, I meant fan - if they ever decide they don't want tickets anymore. The overall fan interpretation is correct, though: The Giants and Jets owners are effectively taking out an interest-free loan from fans that never has to be paid back - and since the PSLs are only good so long as the teams remain in the new stadium, hey can be expected to turn into worthless paper should the team relocate again several decades down the road.
In any case, it's yet another indication of how the "Big Four" pro sports are increasingly positioning themselves to be unaffordable to anyone below the wealthiest classes. The teams will blame the "free market," but as we've seen before, the market for luxury goods like high-priced sports tickets is largely a creation of public policy - would the Giants still be able to find 80,000 people able to cough up money for PSLs if the rich were still paying pre-Bush taxes?
I would disagree with the notion that lower personal taxes causes sports ticket prices to increase abnormally. If this was the case, then prices at high end restaurants, the prices of high end vehicles, etc., would have risen at a similar rate. They haven't. All higher marginal tax rates achieve is sending money off shore and out of the country. (The Swedish and British experience comes to mind.)
Allowing 50% of the ticket cost to be counted as a business expense, OTOH, is a cost driver. It provides a direct incentive for wealthy people, via their businesses, to spend their money on one product over another. The most galling part is that the tickets are rarely used to actually entertain clients - most of the time I simply see the sons, daughters and friends of high rollers sitting in those seats. Dumping the 50% deduction would put a real dent in the ability of teams to charge big bucks for suites and PSLs, and might in turn impact the economics of sport for the better.
Posted by: Dennis Prouse on August 27, 2008 02:00 PM
I agree with you on the business-expense deduction (I cite it in the 2002 Voice article linked to above), but I think tax cuts for the rich have played a role as well - unlike high-end restaurants, pro sports tickets are a limited resource operating in a monopoly economy, so it's not like a bunch of entrepreneurs can just open up new football teams to try to undercut their competitors. (And, for that matter, high-end restaurant prices have gone through the roof - or at least, there are more restaurants charging once-insane prices these days.)
Posted by: Neil on August 27, 2008 02:09 PM
It is time for new york to get their own nfl team .The giants and jets are new jersey teams. The jets might be changing their name to new jersey jets soon. Both teams could have done what green bay make the fans own a stock of the team instead of these psls
Posted by: Dan on August 28, 2008 11:05 AM
It is time for new york to get their own nfl team .The giants and jets are new jersey teams. The jets might be changing their name to new jersey jets soon. Both teams could have done what green bay make the fans own a stock of the team instead of these psls
Posted by: Dan on August 28, 2008 11:05 AM
It is time for new york to get their own nfl team .The giants and jets are new jersey teams. The jets might be changing their name to new jersey jets soon. Both teams could have done what green bay make the fans own a stock of the team instead of these psls
Posted by: Dan on August 28, 2008 11:06 AM
