How the Sports Stadium Went Luxe

[Benjamin Grimm]

This article may be behind a paywall if you're not a subscriber, but I think The New Yorker allows a few free reads a month. It's an interesting look at the economics of modern sports stadiums.

How the Sports Stadium Went Luxe

Some brief interesting snippets:

 

Thirty-year life spans, the long-standing benchmark for major sports venues, became twenty-five or twenty. Renovation is not just a once-a-decade thing; it never ends.

 

There may be little incentive for the league to preserve affordable seating—which has the lowest return on investment—aside from the energy that pictures of frenzied fans in the sections behind the end zones add to the broadcast.

 

The pandemic was also instrumental in convincing owners that, instead of trying to fit as many seats as possible into a venue—the traditional mind-set—they could make more revenue by removing seats, because people would pay for space.

[MFS62]

The little guy getting hurt - again.

Later