from Amazon
Friday, March 07, 2008
All-you-can-eat ballparks
Basically, for a $25 or $30 markup on the price of your ticket, you get all the free food and drinks you can consume (other than beer). I don’t understand the complaint of some, other than they get the chance to be quoted in a newspaper, like this guy:
“It’s disgusting,” says Christine Gerbstadt, a registered dietitian and national spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association (ADA). “Why can’t people just enjoy the game and eat sensibly?”
After all, this is a free country. Especially since there are options:
...says Jim Leahey, the A’s vice president for sales and marketing. “We recognize there’s certain fans who are vegetarian and want healthy alternatives. We have 35,000 seats. If the 1,000 (all-you-can-eat) seats don’t appeal to you, we have plenty of alternatives.”
Basically, to the complainers: shut up. Since some fans want this, and they think they can game the markup price to their advantage, let them. Clearly, since this is so popular with the teams today, the average fan is being taken for a ride. The teams are falling all over themselves trying to expand the all-you-can-eats. My guess is that teams are probably making a good profit from those families of four who are buying 140$ all-you-can-eat-and-watch tickets to shut their kids up, when they would likely be better off paying 40$ for tickets, and spending a la carte. This is basically just like gambling at blackjack. You can probably game it so you can barely come ahead, but the casino houses know that they have plenty of suckers who will simply be in the red to more than balance out the pro players.
In any case, as long as people have options, there’s no issue here. Same goes for tier-ed ticket pricing: no reason a Yankees opponent ticket should cost the same as the Royals on the primary market, since it’s guaranteed they aren’t priced the same on the secondary market.
1500 of some of the better seats in Atlanta’s Turner Field have been changed to include this all-you-can-eat nonsense. Those seats were $40 and I preferred them to others. However, they’re now $70 with all you can eat. Of course, there are other options in seating areas that aren’t as good. I don’t see this as the clubs responding to customer demand. I see it as another ploy to milk more money out of the fans. I personally don’t eat at the ballpark. The quality of the food is just so bad, at least at Turner Field. Incidentally, while doing this they also raised the price on all other seats $5.