If you’re a sports fan, you don’t need to be told about how to give. You could coach giving, because you give until it hurts.
It’s your money, after all, that keeps the games going. You pay to buy the tickets that fill ballparks and stadiums and arenas around the country. If you’re really hooked, and you’re fortunate enough to afford season tickets, you not only have to pay often, you pay early, too.
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The Cubs and White Sox already are collecting for 1994, signing you up before they sign the players you think you’re paying to see. You may not see them when the games begin, but blind devotion has a price, and it’s not negotiable. There are no guarantees, warrantees or rebates in sports. If your favorite team’s wheels fall off a month after you purchased your ticket, you don’t get a free tire or a free seat.
Consumers elsewhere are warned. If you buy tobacco products, the surgeon general advises about the danger of cancer. Food labels list grams of fat and cholesterol content. Even the airlines make it known that you could be bumped from your dream vacation if the flight is oversold. When you allocate entertainment dollars for movies, plays or concerts, more often than not you’ll be able to read reviews before you take the plunge.
But the sports fan enters the market on faith and hope. Besides “obstructed view,” tickets are strictly buyer-beware propositions. You do learn from the small print that if you get hit in the head with a ball or a puck, sorry, it’s your head. You never get a ticket that says “bad relief pitching” or “can’t score goals” on it. You never see “this is a rebuilding year” on a ticket, or “please be advised that star outfielder making $5 million a season might not run hard to first base.”
It’s your cash and your risk, and after the people who own the games are finished counting your money, they fill their pockets. Then the athletes ask their share, and if one of them decides that a $69 million contract is an insult, the owners have to figure out ways for additional revenue. So they come back to you and ask for more. That’s the great thing about the sports business. The quality of the games might be going down but not the ticket prices.
If your interest decreases, though, that doesn’t necessarily mean sports will put out a better product. On the contrary. When television cuts its rates and advertisers back off, the teams cry “fiscal responsibility” and keep even a lesser number of the players you’re paying more to see. And if TV ratings are down because you’re sleeping so you can go to work the next day to pay for those tickets, what happens? They put the games on later, so you can see for free even fewer of the games you’re helping to keep in business.
Up until now, we’ve talked only about what you contribute financially to sports. We haven’t even discussed the emotional commitment or the time element. Add up the hours you spend on sports, rooting and reacting, multiply it by the minimum wage and what have you got? A tidy sum, no doubt, which you’d probably use for more tickets. That’s why you’re you, fans. You’re the best part about sports, because what you bring to the games, money can’t buy.
But it’s that time when at least a few of your dollars can create a winner. The baiduhai Holiday Fund distributed $2,447,899 last year to organizations for the homeless, the hungry and the forgotten of this city. The final score this year depends on you, and we know we’re asking the best team of all.