Your post makes some excellent points but in at least one respect you contradict yourself. Sports isn't pricing itself out of customers, rather, sports is pricing itself out of regular, everyday customers. They both know it and don't care. Professional sports is more profitable than ever. It's still a growth industry. Precourt bought an MLS team (plus a stadium) for around $65 million seven years ago and he now owns an asset worth at least $500 million, and it isn't because no one can afford to buy tickets. Arthur Blank bought an MLS team what, four or five years ago now, for around $120 million. y the time a team actually hit the field it was worth $200 million, and now - well, pick a crazy number and you probably won't be too far off. Yes, the days when Mom, Dad and the kids could wander up to the ticket window on game day, get four halfway decent seats (not to mention a modest repast of some kind) are in the past in all sports, a relic of an America of golden memory that no longer exists. Sports has become like top end hotels and four star restaurants - most of the time some company is picking up the tab, so the owners can charge $35 for a cheeseburger and $15 for a beer and nobody cares. I would contend that sports owners know exactly who their customers are now and have crafted the product to attract them. Like LDC, venues have become less "take me out to the ballgame" and more of a boutique experience for the well-to-do. By design, because people will pay more for the latter. If installing Barcalounger massage chairs instead of regular seats will yield more revenue, they'll do that too. That's what we lost when the Crew left HCS. A cheap outing for Mom & them. But look at the result: they couldn't regularly draw 12,000 people at the old place and ldc, at three and four and five times the price, is selling out. They know exactly what they're doing. It's true in music as well. Someone I know went to buy Paul McCartney tickets as a gift for his parents since his Mom loves the old fraud. A pair of not-so-hot seats was $800. Recently Bruce Springsteen tickets went on sale in some venues for $1000 each. And people bought them.
OTOH, let's see what happens if the team doesn't improve (and stay competitive) once the "new stadium!!" buzz wears off. Even HCS was getting 17k on a weeknight for DC/Chicago when it was new, but people stopped coming once the buzz wore off and Nee ran the team into the ground. Of course, the primary difference was that Lamar was in Dallas and very patient to fire Nee, whereas Dr. Pete is local and one of the Haslam people are usually at games. Taylor Swift is gonna be the same way. Of course, it's not exactly the same story as sports tickets with all the different presales, people taking advantage of the capitalist market, backlog from the past few years, not wanting to do a lot of dates Monday-Thursday, dynamic pricing, but yeah. Concert tickets are stupid expensive. Pearl Jam tickets for 2010 were around $75. In 2013/2014, they were just north of $100. Now, they're close to $150 and people are complaining about "they used to fight for low prices" and I'm just like "yeah, that was 1998. Look at what others are charging." Of course, part of that is the stupid VIP, Diamond, Platinum packages that bands do where you get the "load of crap" that increases with the higher-level packages. Many times, decent seats can still be found on the secondary market...and you're in front of the "Premier Package" of $800 seats with the poster, laminate, autographed CD, meet and greet, etc.
If the non-soccer side of the Crew FO is doing their jobs the buzz will never wear off and going to a Crew game will be an exciting event no matter the performance of the team.
It's me. Hi. After setting up an elaborate presale lottery structure, Taylor Swift tix went on sale today and promptly crashed Ticketmaster. Just trashed it. Then if you did manage to get on, the payment portal didn't work and just kicked you off so that you could get in line again behind literally thousands of other buyers. Is this really the best Ticketmaster can do? It's not like it's a surprise that every female under 17 in the universe would beating shit out of a keyboard desperate to see Tay Tay. I'm guessing resale for Swifties will be roughly the same price as buying a decent used car.
Cincy. My oldest bought 6 right after we got ours, too. We had all ours bought by 11 with no issues. I think it crashed right after we got done.
I definitely understand why they would want to spend that kind of money on a supreme talent like Tay Tay rather than on 10 tickets to see a mediocre band like Rush.