A steep price to pay

"THE SECOND RULE of economics," bellowed my Business & Finance professor Walter Johnson at the University of Missouri some 30 years ago, "is ... if you paid it, it must be worth it." In the modern-day sports world, fans have had to learn that lesson the hard way--over and over again. As New York Post TV columnist Phil Mushnick has pointed out on a number of occasions, no one abuses its best customers more than drug dealers and owners of sports franchises and, yet, the addicts and patrons just cannot seem to help themselves, and simply keep coming back for more.

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Take the price of a World Series ticket, for instance. Its market value is set by Major League Baseball, not the individual teams, and MLB has determined that it can charge what only can be considered scalper's fees. The Game 7 ticket shown here--yes, we know there was no Game 7 at Yankee Stadium this year; we were able to secure it from a Bronx Bomber loyalist in mourning (Go Bosox!)--lists at more than $500. Our Yankee rooter in question has four field-level season tickets that go for $115 apiece. So, he lays out $37,260 for his 81-game allotment, while the Yankee brass--like many club owners in any number of sports--do not allow him to sell any unused tickets on websites such as StubHub, although the Yankee hierarchy has no problem scalping their own tickets through cozy deals with ticket brokers, as if fans weren't already being bled to death. Come the postseason (actually, weeks before) our loyal rooter has to cut another check for a quartet of passes to each and every possible home playoff game the Yanks may play. (Get out your calculators; this is going to get ugly.)

There are three Division Series contests ($248 a ticket, $2,976 total); four American League Championship Series encounters ($341 a ticket, $5,456 total); and four World Series games ($521 a ticket, $8,336 total); at those prices (which do not count the eye-popping handling fees charged for post-season tickets), it had dam well better be a real Fall Classic. However, should the Crankees (er, Yankees) take a first-round exit--as they have done the last three years--the balance of the postseason money is used as a down payment for next year's season tickets, in essence granting the club a rather generous interest-free loan; remember to multiply these numbers by the thousands of season-ticket holders who simply cannot wait to spend their dough on the Pinstripers, and spend they will, especially at the concession stand. Worse, come the postseason, the already off-the-chart prices for such fantastic fare as hot dogs and soda are ratcheted up beyond belief. Seriously, it would be cheaper to dine at the best restaurant in town. Believe me, the subprime crisis is nothing compared to a father of four trying to feed his kids--or park his car; yes, the fees go up here as well during the playoffs--at the ballpark.

The crazy thing is, baseball remains the most affordable sport of the big four. The National Hockey League and National Basketball Association only play half as many games as does the National Pastime, while the National Football League (16 games) and NCAA Division I (10-13 contests) hit the gridiron but once a week. In essence, they have less paydays and therefore charge more for their tickets.

Consumers also may endure a double-whammy when, oh let's say, they subscribe to Cablevision, which, like most cable firms, has been granted monopoly status by the geniuses in Washington. (Actually, those politicians might not be so dumb; I refer you to their bulging pockets that are overflowing with PAC money, courtesy of, among others, cable companies.) Consequently, when the New York Rangers and Knicks fail to make the playoffs--no easy chore in the NHL and NBA, but the Broadway Blueshirts and Knicks more often than not have managed it quite nicely in recent years--it costs their owner (Cablevision's James Dolan) tens of millions of dollars in unsold seats at Madison Square Garden. (We won't even get into the $11,600,000 sexual harassment suit that Dolan and Knicks GM Isaiah Thomas just lost, or the multimillions they're paying a string of former coaches who were fired well before their long-term contracts had expired.) The point is, Dolan funds those losses by hiking customers' cable bills. Oh, and he has the concession stand thing down to a science, too; like when he took all the water fountains out of MSG and hiked the price of [H.sub.2]O to $5 a bottle.

Despite all this griping, it must be made clear that I really am a capitalist at heart. I truly believe in the invisible hand of the marketplace and absolutely love free enterprise. No one is forcing fans to pay for anything; the choice is theirs. It's not like heating your home or putting a roof over your family's head or paying for your kids' dental work. What you spend on sports--be it tickets, licensed jerseys, cable and satellite TV packages, bets on football games, etc.--comes from discretionary income. George Steinbrenner, James Dolan, and all the rest of those greedy fat cats are not stealing food off your table.