FA Cup final outrageous ticket price hike

Re sporting events in the U.S., unless you're a season ticket holder, it's going to be almost impossible to get tickets anywhere but the second-hand market a la StubHub and the like, and buying tickets that way, you're not even going to get into the building--forget about having a decent seat (it might not even be a set--it might be standing room only), for under $1,000 . . . and if we're talking about the Super Bowl, make that more like $3,000. So a top-tier ticket for £145 for finals sounds cheap to me. It's not unusual for me to have to pay the Category C price per ticket for just a regular season game against a crappy opponent, for decent but not great seats.

Yeah, you get a raw deal in America.  PPV;s for boxing events are normally $100 aren't they?  And the boxers themselves can make a lot more money selling out a 10,000 seater arena in Vegas than they can selling out a 90,000 seater stadium in London, such are the price discrepancies.  

Yeah, that's just one day, and that's a cheap game.  Seats for the first rows--like the first 15-20 rows, for the upcoming Thursday night game against the Red Sox are in the neighborhood of $800-1000.  That's just one, early season, weeknight game.  The Red Sox are the Yankees' big rival, though.

Of course, most folks are not going to sit in those first rows--they can't afford to.  If I were going to that Red Sox game I'd be in the upper decks behind home plate.  Tickets in the upper deck behind home plate for that game are around $40.  Usually I like to sit a bit lower than that, but moving one section lower for that game makes the tickets at least twice as much for seats that are anywhere near the infield.  And then there are "service fees" above that, so an $80 ticket is actually going to wind up costing you over $100 once you add in all the fees.

Season tickets in the first rows for most baseball teams are in the neighborhood of $50,000 or more--that's for 81 home games.  Season tickets for the other sports are not quite that high because they don't have as many games, but season tickets for the first rows for hockey and basketball (both 41 games) are probably going to be at least $25-30,000.

The amazing thing is that there's no shortage of people paying those sorts of prices.

I go to quite a few games, but I try to keep my costs in the neighborhood of $60 per ticket (or less of course).  I can go to plenty of games that way, and I wind up with decent seats--nowhere near the players usually, but for watching the gameplay, I usually prefer seats that are a bit further away/higher up anyway--I can get a better overview of the field/court/etc.  Occasionally I get lucky and score tickets for $30 or whatever and/or that are pretty close to the players--which is a worthwhile experience even if I can't see the overall gameplay as well.  But you have to really hunt for games/tickets that cheap here.

And yeah, you can get in to most stadiums/arenas on a much tighter budget, at least for regular season games, but for me, it's not worth it to go to a game with a $10-15 ticket.  The seat is going to be in the outfield (for baseball), and/or in the upper rows of the nosebleeds at some weird angle, etc. and I just can't see the game good enough.  I'd rather watch the game at home where I can see what's going on.

I pay I think in the region of £90/month, that's for all the sports packages, movies (which I never watch), kids and other entertainment packages (again which I never watch), but that does include phone and fibre broadband too.  Probably could get that cheaper, I'm told, if I ring up and pretend I want to cancel but not got round to it.

Plus there are normally about 4 PPV boxing events a year at around £14.99 each.

So that pretty much covers all the sport you can handle EXCEPT we have a crazy situation here where EPL games which kick off at 3pm aren't allowed to be televised in Britain (to protect lower leagues), so even after buying all the sports packages possible, I would still have to watch some games via illicit methods on foreign networks.

Might cancel the sports packages though, as I watch too much football as it is, and I sometimes end up watching some games on my laptop anyway.