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October 16, 2008
If You Build It, Will They Pay?
Luxury stadiums are on the rise. A top seat can cost $150,000. Beer costs extra.
Newsweek
By Johnnie L. Roberts and Andrew Murr
[T]he Yankees are hardly alone in finding new ways to gouge fans; their premium seats are a bargain when compared with prices in Dallas just for the right to buy a season ticket: as much as $150,000. In the latest sign of hyperinflation in the sports business, a slew of ultraexpensive venues are rising, or have been built recently, across the country from Dallas to Washington to New York—where not only the Yankees, but also the Mets, Jets, Giants and New Jersey Nets will all be getting new digs (the New Jersey Devils got a new arena last year). The total price tag for the New York-area building boom alone: more than $5 billion.
Of course, with the nation's financial system teetering, all this construction couldn't be coming at a worse time. Many of the sports industry's most golden gooses, including financial-services giants and automakers—might have a tough time scrounging up thousands of dollars for a seat these days, and might have to slum it with the hard-pressed masses in the cheap seats (meaning under $100 each at Yankee Stadium). These new sports palaces were conceived in a more conspicuous era, and as such they're replete with luxury suites, upscale club seating, catered food and any number of high-tech distractions. Each stadium has an economically stratified seating scheme that will have fans scraping their pocket bottoms or, in a few cases, even mortgaging their homes (if anyone can get a loan these days).
Of course, Norman Oder has already posted this comment:
Though the article states that "not only the Yankees, but also the Mets, Jets, Giants and New Jersey Nets will all be getting new digs," construction has not begun on the new Nets arena in the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, which faces various challenges (lawsuits, credit crisis, availability of tax-exempt bonds).
Posted by lumi at October 16, 2008 7:37 PM