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Sports fans are by nature traditionalists. Some older baseball fans still bemoan the day that the American League abandoned convention and invented the designated hitter. The phrase “In my day” leading off a sentence is a signal for the younger fans in the room to prepare themselves for a long lecture about how the game has changed for the worse. In some instances they are most certainly right and in some they are wrong, but one recent invention has drawn the ire of young and old alike: personal seat licenses.
Since the Giants and Jets announced plans to use them, the area has been awash in stories about how fans who have supported their team for years are now being priced out of their “legacy”. While the Jets haven’t announced prices for their PSL’s yet, the Giants have and they are shocking, up to $20,000 a seat in the lower tier of the stadium. Fans are right to feel outraged, but they must also realize some harsh economic realities.
The Giants and the Jets are building a new stadium that will cost somewhere around $1.6 billion. Unlike the Dallas Cowboys or our local baseball teams, they are doing this by financing the project themselves instead of relying on public subsidies. While no one would deny that NFL owners make a lot of money, expecting any ownership group to foot those costs on their own is fantasy. PSL’s are a sad, but necessary step.
But the Giants could have lessened the blow and created some goodwill by leaving some of the seats in the new stadium “PSL free”. 20,000 of the seats priced at $1,000 sold without PSL’s would have cost the Giants an additional $20 million, but demonstrated a commitment to let the average fan still make it to the game. It’s too late for the Giants now, but hopefully the Jets will give their fanbase a break.
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Fools and their money are quickly parted.
They'll do it as long as there are people willing to pay it and morons willing to support "their" team regardless of the insult.
The reality is that the wealthy have a loyalty to whatever is trendy or perceived as such. If you price a stadium seat beyond the reach of the unwashed masses then they immediately get noticed by the rich and snatched. To them it's worth it for the chance to be seen and to not have to sit next to "regular" people. Pop a thousand dollar price tag on a bottle of garbage champagne and it doesn't matter that it was fermented inside of a baboon's rectum. The rich would be funny if they weren't also such disgraces as human beings.
Even as football teams nationwide impose PSL's, some baseball teams have to resort to promotions to fill seats. The NFL seems to be much more immune to economic downturns than is MLB, though of course baseball teams have far more seats to fill each season.
Baseball teams have always used promotions to fill seats. That's what cap day, and bat day, and bobblehead day are all about.
The PSLs are a sign that demand far exceed supply. New York needs another team or two! Too bad the NFL is a monopoly.
Also unlike baseball there are are 8 home games only for the team. Meaning 16 home for both the Giants and Jets compared to 162 home games for the Yankees and Mets.
A necessary evil?? How about this, Giants Stadium is a structurally sound perfectly fine stadium to play in. A new stadium was not needed. This is about greed, like everything else these days.
Steven hit the nail on the head.
Supply/demand.
162 games vs 16.
Yeah, but at the same time, that stadium did not need to be replaced. This wasn't the Vet we were talking about or the old Dog Pound.
The Giants and the Jets are building a new stadium that will cost somewhere around $1.6 billion. Who told them to build it? They play in a perfectly good stadium that has been around for 31 years. Considering the fact that is is dormant for 7 months out of the year, why does it need to be torn down and rebuilt? bornbrednewyorker summed it up best, it is all about greed. To the owners of both teams shove the psl money up your collective asses. I would rather watch Arena Football, and not freeze my ass off, while spending thousands of dollars to watch the shitty new York Jets play...
The supply/demand equation is in full effect... Over the weekend, I read the Giants have well over 100,000 people on the season pass waiting list!
The part of the story that really made me laugh was Mara's answer for middle-class season ticket holders who may not be able to pony-up the $20k tab for their "choice" seats... Mara suggested they may want to move their seats to a part of the stadium they could afford. LOL!