YOU DO THE MATH. . .PLEASE
RE: “Just Wondering…What genius at the major sanctioning body came to the conclusion that when the number of people attending a national event keeps dropping
and they generate less money the solution is to raise ticket prices? This is actually being proposed for some national events where attendance is an issue. What in the name of capitalism are they thinking? Don’t they realize that raising ticket and food prices just drives more of their customers away, especially when those customers can watch four and half hours of the race on cable TV for FREE!”
My comments: It IS capitalism and it's a numbers game...and isn't capitalism a numbers game? The "bean-counters" look at it from the standpoint of maximizing bottom-line profit.
The more bodies that you have, the more it costs for services such as security, restroom cleaning, etc. If you can cut your cost of doing business by even 5 percent and keep revenues at the same total level, you make more money. Grandstands that are full of bodies mean lot of costs, even if the cost per body is less. Grandstands that are empty may not look good in pictures, but the bottom line is the bottom line.
An accountant would rather see an event accounting report that says there were 5 paying customers that paid one thousand dollars each, with costs of business of 10 dollars per person ($5000 income - $50 costs = $4950 profit) than an accounting that had 5,000 patrons at $1, even though it might only cost 50 cents per person to run the event ($5000 income - $2500 costs = $2500 profit). Granted, my examples may be extreme, but I think you can get the picture.
That is also the bottom line reasoning behind luxury condo sky-boxes. The line of reasoning that skyboxes are for the sponsors doesn't hold water, because the sponsors would be sponsoring anyway. The skyboxes are to justify higher sponsorship money outlay to the bottom line...more money to the bottom line at a "reasonable cost of business."
By the way...it's this same thinking that drives up the cost of bus service in large cities when the transportation geniuses know that ridership will go down, even when the mandate from the city council is to provide transportation that is low-cost and available to all citizens.
Dale Tuley
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