Why buying tickets to a game has become so unaffordable
CNN
Take me out to the ballgame. If you can afford it.
Across the country, ticket prices have surged, making it impossible for many to afford to go see their favorite team play without spending a fortune. (And don’t even ask about Super Bowl tickets, which will be the most expensive on record. Hint: $9,000+) The price of tickets has surged far beyond inflation over the past few decades, and much of it has been by design. Teams create a limited supply of seats, and increased competition for those seats among people with disposable income is driving up prices fiercely. Dynamic pricing for tickets on ticket-resale platforms and overbuilt new stadiums and arenas with more luxury suites and premium seats have also driven up prices. That makes catching a game in person, increasingly, a luxury good. And that’s the way team owners and major sports leagues want it. “Tickets are not something that everybody buys. What the NFL wants is a lot of money for around 70,000 people in a city,” said Victor Matheson, a sports economist at College of the Holy Cross. Teams “don’t care if families can’t afford the seats as long as they can still hook them watching TV,” he said. Major sports leagues make around two-thirds of their revenue on television deals.

President Donald Trump’s attacks on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell are so commonplace at this point that they barely register in financial markets these days. The rapidly intensifying multi-pronged efforts by Trump’s advisers to amplify and expand on Trump’s attacks are a good reason to rethink that indifference.