The Cost of Sports – Mack Ade

There’s been a considerable amount of chatter regarding the cost of opening day tickets for the Mets. In addition, I heard this morning that there were 8,000 unsold tickets for the Jets-Patriots game on Thanksgiving Day. And then we sit around waiting to see if our star third baseman is going to make twenty million dollars a year rather than fifteen.

Fifteen million dollars a year playing baseball.

I no longer live anywhere close to city that has a major sports franchise playing their home games. I consider this an advantage. I no longer have to wait in grid lock traffic, on the way to pay-through-the-nose parking and watch my favorite team very seldom win it all.

Let’s see, I’m a Mets, Rangers, Knicks, and Giants fan. How many times have I gone all the way in the past 20 years?

So tell me… what’s the big deal about watching these games at home, in my underwear, on a big screen television that is showing 84 camera angles and six different instance replay cameras? I paid an extra $29 a month for the sports package and I get every game from every one of these teams.

We’ve written lately about a team that is worth around $1.5Bil dollars. The SNY Network is worth another $2.5Bil. And David Wright (and his agent) isn’t happy being paid $15mil a year… to play baseball.

We keep trashing the Wilpons, but what is Wright’s responsibility here? What’s the difference between 15 and 20 million dollars a year? Won’t most of it go to taxes? And, even if it didn’t, isn’t fifteen million dollars a year enough to do anything?

I’m trying to do the math here. The majority of homes in the United States are worth less than they were five years ago. Everyone seems to be making less money for doing the same thing, or working for far less out of their field. The country owes 11 trillion dollars (WTF!) which is like 11 million, million dollars. They’re saying we’re going to fall off some fiscal cliff at the end of the year and we might go into a much larger recession than the last one.

And, we’re waiting for David Wright and his agent to agree to play baseball somewhere in the 17-18 million dollars per year.  

Does any of this make any sense to any of you? Sure, my cable bill every month kicks a little in for the Wilpon cause, but I’m not spending $500-750 to take my wife and my three grandchildren to opening day. I’ve got hot dogs in the fridge and my car is in the garage, thank you.

Why do you do these things? What are we accomplishing here? Will the 2030 shortstop be paid $50mil a year? What about 2040? $100mil a year? For playing baseball?