ABSTRACT
Every year, a company known as Team Marketing collects data on the price to attend a baseball game in the US. The survey, known as the Fan Cost Index, tracks in each park the price for a family of four to attend a game. Included in the survey are game tickets, food and beverage items, programmes and parking. The first year of the survey was 1991, and the average cost to attend a baseball game was $79.41. Ten years later, in 2001, the average price for attendance was $140.63. In 2006, this average was $171.19. In just 14 years, the price had more than doubled.[ 1 ] Allowing for inflation, this still amounts to a 40 per cent increase in price. Yet Major League Baseball recorded record-breaking attendance in 2006. Clearly the tensions articulated in the pieces of this volume are being played out in other sporting realms.
