The Prices We Pay to See Our Team Play

Since 1985, we’ve paid $1.50 for Costco’s Hot Dog combo.

Using today’s prices, $4.13 would have made more sense:

At baseball games, the story is quite different.

Baseball Game Prices

When a mom, dad, and their two kids go to a baseball game, the basics are the tickets and parking. Then, from there, it’s the beer, the sodas, and the hot dogs, How much you spend depends on where you live. It is much more expensive to be a Boston Red Socks fan than to root for the Arizona Diamondbacks. The cost of the Boston game would have been close to $324 while Arizona is $126.

The Hustle’s list of prices at games for each of baseball’s 30 teams ranged from a high of $7.50 for a hot dog at a San Francisco Giants game to the Arizona Diamondbacks’s low of $2.00. Below, I’ve copied some of the other prices:

Since $1 in 1960 is approximately the same as $10.00 today (BLS Inflation Calculator), we just multiply the Hustle’s $10.35 times ten to calculate what the same prices would be today. As a result, we get around $103.50. However, the game today costs an average of $204.76. So, even accounting for inflation, the prices at baseball games are way up since 1960:

Our Bottom Line: Purchasing Power

We are earning way more than 1960:

But still, it takes more hours of work to pay for the game than it would have with a 1960s inflation adjusted price. While inflation has taken prices up close to 900% (a multiple of 10), the prices for food and parking are up by more. For parking alone, the increase was a whopping 6,616%. As a result, for a typical middle class family’s outing to a baseball game, our purchasing power has declined.

Even for the hot dogs, the increase was 1,366%…but not if you are a Yankees or a Phillies fan.

My sources and more: Thanks to the Hustle email for detailing baseball game costs. If you like quirky facts (as do I), you might want a free Hustle subscription.