So it turns out people actually will drive across the horrible, horrible bridge to Tampa Bay Rays games if you let them bring their kids for $2 each: The Rays drew 25,095 fans for a Wednesday night game against the Diamondbacks last night, thanks to a buy-one-ticket-get-three-kids-tickets-almost-free promotion.
All those kids were then treated to the Rays managing only three hits and getting stomped by Arizona, 7-0. But it’s nights like these when lifetime memories are made, right?
So there’s at least some truth to my theory that Rays fans will only attend more games as long as they only have to pay minor league prices to get in?
I prefer to think of it as “Yankees ticket prices circa 1985.”
I know people have posted in this forum that baseball tickets haven’t gone up more than general inflation blah, blah, blah, but I’m astounded how much it actually costs to go to an A’s game now. Twenty five years ago one could sit in bleacher seats for $3 and and decent upper deck seat for about $5. Now the cheapest seats seem to go for about $25 for weekend games. To me, there’s no way the $5 of 1988 dollars equates to $25 today. If I was more interested in attending games now (which I no longer have time for) it would have an definitely have an effect on me going on a regular basis.
Ticket prices have actually risen about twice the rate of inflation on average:
www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=6679
(Just look at the chart. Nate’s argument that you’re getting a better product because ESPN’s stadium rankings have gone up is, um, pretty speculative.)
Indeed inflation has only been about 3.5% the past few decades. Ticket prices have gone up MUCH faster than that.