Article:Have a Few Thousand

Hey fans,

Rising ticket prices and those PSL's are today's topics. My college roommate, a lifelong NY Jets fan, finally got the word about those dreaded PSL's - a license that enables NFL owners to steal from their most loyal fans. My friend's seats have increased over 200 percent in five years and now he has to pay a PSL of $4,000/seat (he has four), plus the cost of the seats which will be $120 per seat/game. This will generate $370 million for the Jets, just enough to pay their No. 1 draft picks for the next two years. What's an average Joe fan to do? Do professional sports team owners think everyone works at Goldman Sachs? I'm glad my children are grown and out of the house. Because at these prices I would get to enjoy professional sports, in person, with my family a lot less than when we did when they were younger and we used to mark off the calendar months in advance of when we would go catch a game - several times a season. Professional sports, for the average fan, is being relegated exclusively to TV and HDTV at that. I believe we may have reached the Tipping Point, the phrase Malcolm Gladwell made famous in his No. 1 selling book. I sure do hope we have. The NY baseball teams are also going into new stadiums where the average ticket price will be over $100 - and that's for baseball - traditionally the lowest price ticket of all sports. A Jets fans tried to stage a protest rally at the annual Jets v. Giants preseason game last week and had less than 20 people join him outside the Meadowlands. As long as the fans display such a lack of civil disobedience, the owners will just sit back and laugh all the way to their air conditioned/heated 50 yard line luxury box filled with their favorite booze and lots of those little hot dogs wrapped in dough.

Till next time.

Chuck T

www.wonfan.com