Sport Mortgages: When You Have Nothing Better On Which To Spend Your Money
If one thing in this world is certain, it’s that Lady Gaga is here to stay. If two things in this world are certain, it’s that Lady Gaga is here to stay and even in hard economic times, the price of premium seats at sporting events go up.
What if the best seats in your team’s arena or stadium were sold to you like condos? Does that sound like something you might be interested in?
Sports mortgages are here and they’re going to improve your life in ways that you never imagined … is what the marketing department for these new innovations want you to believe. And they might be telling you the truth, but they might also be lying their asses off. I’ll come back to that in a second. First, what’s a sports mortgage?
Cash-strapped pro franchises and university athletic programs are toying with the concept of charging fans a fixed rate over extended periods of time for their premium season ticket seats.
At Kansas, Jayhawk fans who sign up to pay as much as $105,000 over 10 years will earn the right to buy guaranteed top seats for football over the next three decades. In return, the seats themselves will stay locked in at 2010 prices.
U.C. San Francisco fans have even more latitude—30 years to pay for a half-century’s worth of season football tickets. Like a home mortgage, the long-term deal requires the equivalent of annual interest payments.
Yeah. ‘Cause when people think Jayhawks tickets worth $10,500 per season, they’re thinkin’ KU football.
These “equity seat rights” or “endowment seating program” plans propose that every participant fans is a big winner because no one will jack up the prices of their seats on them. Additionally, even if they sell their tickets elsewhere, the original owner of the tickets can write it off as a school donation.
But what isn’t being said about this ticket-selling method? For starters, no assurances are given to fans that all this additional guaranteed revenue for the programs will serve the team’s best interests. In theory, revenue raises the reputation and success of the team. Without that carrot dangled in front of the teams – why wouldn’t they just sit on the money? Spend it elsewhere? Or do nothing with it until the 11th hour?
Kansas is among the leaders of sport mortgages (to be called “sportgages” until I find something about ‘em that I support) and the university hopes to eventually raise $200 million from these tickets, saving program from falling into debt or dipping into state tax dollars. And the myriad stadium and sport complex improvements developments that money would buy is nice, yes, but impractical.
[California’s Golden Bears] has sold more than 1,800 of the 3,000 available seats, collecting $150 million for renovations to its own Memorial Stadium, built in 1923.
The top pricing tier costs between $175,000 and $225,000 and provides University Club members with not only prime seats for the next five decades but also sweeping views of the San Francisco Bay. However, when the 6 percent annual administrative fee is rolled in, a University Club seat worth $225,000 will cost the buyer more than twice that much when paid out over 30 years.
One way to look at this is that fans will be locked into seeing their team for 10, 20 or 30 years. Another way to look at it is that people will be LOCKED IN to seeing a team for 10, 20 or 30 years. My finger didn’t get stuck on the Caps Lock button. That would be too much of a coincidence.
Fans shouldn’t want to be locked into anything centered around a sports team for decades at a time. Teams are fluid – especially college teams. I know there are thousands, perhaps millions of fans blindly rooting for teams until they die and I guess this is the problem with a lot of sports fans. Paying essentially a second mortgage for tickets to a team over a lengthy period of time is a clear statement from fans: I have no standards other than that you exist. You don’t have to succeed, you don’t have to maintain a high-level of talent over this time period, you don’t even have to keep the same school colors – just exist.
That – as a slobbering, desperate, self-esteemless fan – is all I ask. Oh, and premium parking and maybe a padded seat.
Now here, take my money.
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Photos courtesy of Flickr
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