Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Prices
The other day, I had the idea of picking up a Green Bay Packer jersey. I thought it'd be kinda neat since I've been a fan - not fanatic - but interested, pretty much as long as I can remember. Going back to the 60s growing up across the lake from the Chicago Bears and from the state of the Detroit Lions, it was always the Packers. Anyway with wonders of the Internet, I entered nfl.com, then clicked NFL Shop and a little bit later was looking at Holy Crap!, $194.99. Basically two hundred bucks for a fancy sweatshirt.
What the hell, is it made of gold or something? I checked out baseball, and a flannel shirt runs roughly the same cost. It's amazing that stuff like that costs so much. Just for yucks, I checked out football tickets. For the New England Patriots, you can pay $185 for parking and $260 for a ticket. I know it's a playoff game and all, but jeeze, $450 to watch a three hour game? I checked the Daytona 500 NASCAR race - $160; NHL, Detroit and Colorado - $50 parking and $105 for a ticket; Indy 500 Formula 1 is $100.
A family must have to take out a loan for something like that. Where does some young couple with a couple of kids come up with the bucks to spend an afternoon at some sporting event? Take your wife and two kids to NASCAR: $640 for tickets, I'm guessing a couple hundred for munchies and a program, and that doesn't cover getting there. You're looking at an easy grand just to let your kids watch some cars run around in a circle for a couple of hours. Oh well, I guess that's my age showing again.
Update:I just read that the LA Galaxy will be paying David Beckham $1 million a week for five years to play soccer for them? And this in a country that has more people on death row than would like to watch soccer!
