Eric Loomis wonders if sports fans will ever stop shelling out for stadium tickets:
Here are two assertions that don’t seem contestable: (1) The cost of attending most major sporting events has been rising in real terms for decades. (2) The cost of watching most major sporting events via remote technology has been plunging, especially in recent years.
As a simple matter of economics, these trends can’t both continue indefinitely. Forty years ago the average NFL ticket cost $30 in 2013 dollars: this year the average is probably over $100 when you include the cost of private seat licenses. And the cost of parking and concessions has risen even faster than ticket prices. Meanwhile a giant television with a superb picture costs in real dollars what what a 12-inch portable black and white TV that pulled in a fuzzy broadcast of two games per weekend cost a generation ago, and you can for a fairly modest price watch literally every NFL game of the season on your iPhone if you so desire.
On the other hand – people have been predicting that broadcasting sports events would kill the live gate ever since the invention of television, and pretty much precisely the opposite has happened: as more sports have become available on TV (and now through other technologies as well), the live gate for major sports events, in America at least, has continued to grow.
The Dish 