It has gotten increasingly hard for average Americans to afford to take their families out to sporting events, because the costs are so high. But as the NFL continues to lose fans, TV ratings, and moral authority, ticket prices have also crashed to unheard of lows.
Recently National Journal editor Josh Kraushaar pointed out that tickets for this Thursday’s Redskins game fell to an amazing low of $10 a piece on the secondary market at Stub Hub.
Good grief: lower bowl tickets for Thursday night's Redskins game are going for less than 10 dollars on StubHub. #snyder
— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) November 21, 2017
Clearly, people can’t give NFL tickets away. However, this is a primetime game on Thanksgiving and those prices are at near give-away levels.
Of course, another problem with the NFL (and other sporting events) is all the costs that go with the ticket price are simply spiraling out of the average American’s price range.
For instance, a website recently looked into the costs of a ticket, a beer or soft drink, a hot dog, and parking for the NFL and found that costs quickly raced past $190 a person at its cheapest. Worse, costs hit an incredible $350 a person at the nation’s most expensive NFL stadium. Even at its cheapest that could make a visit to the stadium cost a family of four $760 for one outing. It is simply unbelievable that a family of four is looking at having to scrape together a purse approaching $1,000 just for one football game. Indeed, at the most expensive stadium, the cost hits $1,400 for a family of four.
However, the “salad days” of the NFL being able to charge an arm and a leg for their product might be over, and the ticket prices mentioned in Kraushaar’s tweet could be a sign of the times. A primetime ticket to a Thanksgiving Day game would normally cost anywhere from $85 to $110, especially in the Lower Bowl section of the stadium. The fact that the Redskins are practically giving these seats away goes to show just how far the league has been humbled.
Of course, the Redskins and the Giants have both combined for six wins this year, and are having very rough seasons. But, with attendance down across the league, not just paid attendance but also fans actually showing up to games, teams across the NFL could start slashing prices dramatically.
Add to that, the fact that millionaire players are on the field protesting against America while fans pinch and save to afford to attend a single game, and you can fully understand why the NFL is losing fans by the millions.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.
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