Best Show Tickets

Is it my imagination, or did somebody forget to send the memo about the failing economy to the folks that decide on pricing for baseball tickets? I mean, everything else is falling apart: Banks and other financial institutions are collapsing and/or getting taken over by the handful of institutions that haven't completely screwed themselves up. General Motors is practically giving away cars just to remind you that they still make them, and then asking Congress for help to stay solvent. Gasoline has dropped to about half the price it was just a few months ago (not that I'm complaining about that fact, mind you...) but baseball tickets are more expensive than they've ever been!

It seems like it's getting harder and harder to find Cheap MLB Tickets these days, especially if you're in the market for Red Sox Tickets or Yankees Tickets. It's almost as though Major League Baseball teams exist in some kind of Bizarro World, but the decisions they make are implemented in this one. How else can you explain that it costs $200 to get a decent seat in Shea Stadium, just to watch Luis Castillo hit .245 with three homers while getting paid over six million dollars in 2008. That kind of money used to get you a bionic man. Now it just gets you an aging, washed up middle infielder. Steve Austin would be so disappointed.

Of course, that's not really true. The cost of players does not drive the cost of baseball tickets, and we should all know that. Anyone who knows the first thing about the free market system or who got at least a C- in an intro to economics class* should know that price is predominantly determined by supply and demand. Let's face it: Success breeds popularity, and teams that do well on the field will (eventually) do well at the gate, too. At least that's what they keep telling themselves down there in Tampa.

*Getting a C- in Intro to Economics is hardly a foregone conclusion. I went to a pretty good university, with its own business school, so you would think most of the students in an intro to Economics class would be reasonably bright. Nevertheless, on one of our quizzes, the teacher's assistant told us that among the answers to the question "Who is Allan Greenspan?" he received replies such as "former president of the United States" and "a happily married man." The former of course was definitely not true, while the latter may be (he's married to NBC political correspondent Andrea Mitchell), but was wholly irrelevant to the course. I hope those two did not pass that class, but I really don't know.

Anyway, with popularity, higher prices are bound to come, regardless of the opinions of consumers who may think them unfair. And even though some teams may not be seeing the same levels of attendance as the big boppers in New York or Los Angeles, even the worst teams manage to draw 15,000 to 20,000 fans per game, or over 1.5 million per year. At an average of roughly $50 per fan per game between the tickets, parking and any concessions, that's at least $75 million per year in raw income, most of which goes right to the team (the gate receipts are split with the visitors).

The laws of supply and demand are of course not just true in baseball, but in almost any field, and there's no real reason to think that the floundering economy (Or anything else, for that matter) will reverse the upward spiral any time soon. With that said, however, there is reliable tickets info to be found, and comparatively inexpensive baseball tickets can be bought.

Of course, "comparatively" can be a pretty vague term, especially when you're talking about a market as inflated as this one. When tickets are as hard to come by as those in Boston, for example, finding two seats together for a Saturday game against the Yankees for less than $200/each would be "comparatively" inexpensive. But the opportunity cost (a term I learned in Economics class, in which I got a B+, I think) is still very high. Any time you have to decide between spending a certain amount of money on baseball tickets versus spending it on, say, you kid's college textbooks for the semester, or two months groceries, or three years worth of oil changes, you'd have to admit that baseball tickets are not cheap.

But if you're already OK on the groceries front (and textbooks and oil changes, for that matter) you can get decent baseball tickets for an only mildly outlandish price. You just have to know where to look. And if you give up on baseball, you can always try Cirque New York!