Every game two sections on the edge of the third base side's upper deck are packed to the brim while entire sections in the rest of the stadium are nearly empty. Seats in those two sections cost $5 a piece. The rest of the upper deck costs $10 a seat, twice as much for some inexplicable reason. Maybe the owners don't want a lot of spectators, because you tend to see entire rows left unoccupied in the upper deck.
Only the right field's upper deck is often packed, so it would seem $10 is fair out there. But if you look to the lower level in the outfield, it's a pitiful display of empty seat after empty seat. That's probably because it costs over $20 to sit in the outfield, a ridiculous sum. If you want to sit on field level in either side of the plate, get ready to pay a small fortune to watch 1/81 of the regular season at Nats Park.
People want to go to the games, but the bottom line is it's too expensive compared to the product provided. The Nats are still in the middle of the pack in terms of paid attendance, but it should be much higher. There's a new stadium in a highly-populated baseball-starved area.
The Nats aren't doing terribly well on television either. That's mostly because they're often relegated to MASN2, a fictitious channel that occasionally replaces CSPAN2 on the dial. Guess who owns both MASNs? Peter Angelos, the corrupt Orioles owner, who was the only one to vote against Montreal's move to DC.
Lastly, the Nats haven't paid the stadium's rent to the city this season. The Lerners claim that the stadium is not technically finished just yet, so they are withholding over $3 million due to DC. Contractually, the Lerners might be right- who knows- but they should probably offer at least some of the money as a measure of good faith. It doesn't help anybody to intensify the tension between the team and the city.
No comments:
Post a Comment