Rising Prices in the Sports Community
Damian Nytko
American Politics
Professor Jenkins
April 11, 2022
Rising Prices in the Sports Community
As America’s love for sports continues to grow, the prices to go to sports events continue to rise. The cost for live sporting events is becoming an achievable goal for members of the middle class in America, in all sports but more specifically professional football games. The cost of everything has risen in recent years, from the cost of tickets, to concessions, to even parking for the event. The cost affiliated with live sports is inflating fast, and average Americans miss being able to afford it.
The average cost of tickets for a regular season NFL game in 2021 is $465. This price has a drastic increase compared to the average cost of $190. This price increase is assumed to be related to the rapidly growing salaries of the players and staff members. As athletes in the NFL get better, and more well known, they are able to ask to be offered for money, making their salaries range from $2 million to $45 million per season. These high salaries, along with the organization trying to make its money they lost during the 2020 COVID-19 season require the NFL to raise their prices in an attempt to make it back.
With the lost season due to the COVID-19 pandemic the NFL could not make the money they usually receive from ticket sales, concessions, merch sales at the event, and other sources of revenue that come from live sports. Although this money was lost, the athletes still played, and there were still paychecks to write. Players salaries are high, requiring a lot of forced revenue to be made, to make up for those contracted numbers. Similar to regular season games, the costs of Super Bowl tickets have skyrocketed. These tickets were already high, due to it being the biggest game of the year, and one that even people who are not usually interested in sports often tune in to find out the results, or even just watch the commercials. The cost of tickets to the 2021 Super Bowl ranged from $4,200 to almost $100,000. These ticket costs are significantly higher than the 2019 ticket costs, ranging from $3,000 to $24,000.
In 2019 the ticket costs were already something a lot of people had to save money and plan for, but with the inflated costs that were present in 2021, going to an NFL game is not an achievable goal for a lot of Americans, especially those in the middle and low class. If these inflated prices do not begin to drop back down, NFL games can expect to only be gone to by members of the higher classes, those who can afford to drop hundreds or thousands of dollars on a sporting event. Many middle and lower class citizens will continue to watch the games on television and have to forego their hope of seeing their favorite team play in person.
The NFL could begin to lower these prices and make them more achievable by finding their money lost by Covid in other sources of revenue. The organization could begin charging more for advertisements, whether the advertisements that are posted around the field, or those that are played during commercial breaks during the broadcast version of the game. The NFL could also introduce salary caps to the athletes, preventing better known and more valuable players to request such high amounts of money. This could save the NFL possibly millions of dollars, although it could possibly make some of the athletes mad, it would benefit the fans. The NFL could also work to make its stadiums more energy efficient. The stadiums are full of thousands of lights, with all the glowing signs, the lights to see, heating lamps, and more. The costs of the energy needed to power a stadium are exorbitant, and could be reduced if the proper steps are taken, and the energy is replaced by a cheaper, more sustainable source of power.
As these prices rise, and Americans lose their interest in live sports, the NFL needs to take steps to make a change. If the cost of tickets does not come back down to a reasonable price, one that is achievable by the average American, the interest in live professional sports will be lost completely by those. With the current prices, only those with above average incomes, such as NFL players from other teams and celebrities, are able to afford them. If the NFL wants to keep the working class side of America interested, steps need to be taken.