With the economy still on a steady decline it doesn’t seem to be hurting the NFL during its favorite time of the year… Playoff time. Now with Super Bowl XLIII just around the corner it seems like you still have to make a Hail-Mary pass to the loan office if you want to score a first hand view of any of these games.
I recently had the honor of landing a pair of NFC championship tickets where the Arizona Cardinals in a dramatic finish pushed the hard fighting Philadelphia Eagles out of their nest. It was a great game to watch, the atmosphere was absolutely electrifying and deafening to say the least. But it wasn’t cheap by any means. One tank of gas, two End zone tickets, three square meals, and a four hour tailgate cost me a little over Five hundred dollars. Now even with beer costing me $7.25 a piece I was still one of the lucky ones as I was able to land my pair of tickets at box office prices… a whopping $140.87 a piece ($60 seats during the regular season, 2.5 times the normal cost, after taxes). This isn’t to say that the experience alone wasn’t worth every penny, but is this reasonable or even fair to the average fan? IMG_1283.jpg
I could have easily sat at home and for less then a full tank of gas in my Dodge Ram I could’ve enjoyed the game like a king. No crowds, no lines, no fuss. I could have ate what ever I wanted and bathed in a river of beer, and my view would have been far better on my 52” then watching the micro-machine men running amuck in what felt like quarter mile away at times. I could have been a VIP in my own home with every luxury within my grasp including my DVR for bathroom breaks and never missed a down, but again it was all worth it to witness a little history and say that I was there in person watching a game I love. I spoke with an Eagles fan that spent over three thousand dollars to fly him and his son to the game (There goes his college tuition). Need less to say this is a lot of money for anyone (rich or poor) to have to pay just to enjoy a game first hand. From Stubhub to Craigslist prices ranged anywhere from $200 to $7,000 a piece and that’s just what I witness with my own eyes, so who knows the insanity that went on for those elusive exclusive tickets. I believe that you’d have a better chance finding Willie Wonka’s golden ticket then a fair priced playoff ticket, and lets not even mention the Super Bowl.
After the Eagles upset the New York Giants in the Meadowlands and Arizona locked up yet another playoff home game, it was reported that it took only six minutes for the Cardinals/Eagles tickets to sellout once they went on sell. Wow. 71,000 tickets in six minutes! Unless the University of Phoenix Stadium has thousands of tickets booths and their online ticket services updates, files, and processes at the speed of light it fair to say that tickets weren’t being sold one at a time or even in pairs, but by the dozens, hundreds, and even by the thousands. This of course results in the astronomical and ridicules inflation in ticket prices. These greedy individuals who get first dibs snatch up every ticket they are allowed or can afford at NFL regulated prices and then like a mugger in a dark ally takes you for everything your worth for their own personal gain. This is the lowliest of crimes to take the opportunity from your average die hard fan to witness their team live, after a season and even years of devoted support. We are the ones who paint our faces on game day regardless if we are on our own couch, with our team merchandise, and our pride hanging on the line. We live and die by the wins and losses of our teams, but yet we are denied our chance to be there in person due to our monetary shortcomings. The prices are steep enough with out the increase of scalpers, so the question that arises is… Why aren’t we given a fair chance to get these tickets at box office value? There should be some rule or enforcement that allows the average person to get a pair of these tickets at cost, and not through the person who uses your desperation and dedication to the NFL and our teams. There are more poor people, more lower class people, and more middle-class; then there are rich people. This goes to show that it isn’t the rich that make the NFL the global empire that it has become, but it’s that average man who spends his last dollar on a Chargers T-shirt, or a NY Jets hat, it’s us who spend the millions upon millions to keep the NFL going and the players paid. So, I leave you with this, if we are the ones who are make the NFL, then why has the playoff and the Super Bowl become a rich man’s game?
