It seems like every year, some consumer group does a survey of the cost a family of four incurs to attend a game for the four major sports. They may even include NASCAR now so let's say five major sports, and yes we are stretching the definition for hockey.
Anyway it seems as if they always get a quote from Joe Six Pack something along the lines of, "Yeah, this is really getting out of hand. You have to take out a mortgage just to take your family of four to a game."
Well SOB if someone wasn't listening. Somewhere, Joe Six Pack is doubled over from this kick in the groin.
http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2007/06/19/Take-a-Seat-Sports-Fans-for-a-pric
Take a Seat, Sports Fans - for a Price
by Megan Barnett Jun 19 2007
A start up being backed by a Wall Street giant offers a new twist in stadium financing.
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What if you could spend, say, $100,000 to become the owner of two seats behind the dugout in the new Yankee Stadium, due to be completed in 2009?
We are talking not about tickets, but about the seats themselves. They would be your property for as long as the Yankees play at the stadium. And with the sale of these seats, the Yankees would have raised the entire $1.2 billion needed to build the venue.
.......Stadium Capital’s approach allows fans to be "locked into seats for an extraordinarily long time without any price increase" and "solves the problems municipalities have with a lack of appetite to finance new stadiums."
.......details about his brainchild can be found in Weisbach’s February 2006 filing at the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Patent application No. 20060036506 describes a "method of financing a sports stadium or entertainment center."
......fans would buy seats for a designated period of time and finance them much like a mortgage. Pricing mechanisms can vary, but the most appealing option for buyers might be a 30-year loan with an annual payment equal to the current price of a season ticket. In exchange, the seat becomes real property, equivalent to, say, a condominium. The team (or university or other owner) receives the principal amount of the loan up front, to put toward construction costs.
This arrangement is different from seat licensing, which gives the holder the right to buy a season ticket for a specific seat. It also differs from the stock ownership of teams like the Green Bay Packers. Under Weisbach's system, people own seats, not shares of a team.
Say, for instance, the current price of a season baseball ticket is $3,240. A 30-year loan at 6 percent interest with an annual payment of $3,240 results in a principal amount of $45,000. Even if the price of the seat doubles in the next 20 years, the seat owner still pays $3,240. Investors will have the option of making annual payments over 30 years, paying the entire amount up front, or something in between. Owners can also sell their seats at any time for market value, but rest assured—the team will get a cut of any profits.
So just how many seat buyers would it take to finance a state-of-the-art stadium with the latest retractable roof technology? In an interview, Weisbach said fewer than 10 percent of seats would need to sell in order to build a new stadium. However, going by the example outlined above, the patent application states that selling 20,000 tickets would yield $900 million, just about enough to cover costs. In most Major League stadiums, this would require selling nearly half of the seats.
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