Maybe you’ve heard about the hike in ticket prices and K-Fund donations for tickets to Kentucky basketball games next year. I know most people are saying that it’s wrong and it’s price gouging and it’s like a tax on the rich and blah blah blah. Let me be a capitalist here and say, the ticket is worth what someone will pay. And people will pay it. The unfortunate thing is that top tier athletics costs a lot of money and UK is always planning ahead. UK doesn’t play catch up, they set the bar. Increasing revenues means they always have more money to work with than other teams keeping them in the backseat while UK drives the all-time wins bus.
While jumping from $1350 to $5000 in one whack is pretty frustrating, it’s common for universities to raise fees in big chunks so that they don’t raise them every year. If it went up a $1000 a year for several years people would be outraged every year, so instead universities opt to do it all in one and then keep it at that price for five or ten years. The reality is that while we may not like it, for the vast majority of us who already can’t afford season tickets it doesn’t affect us anyway. I’m lucky that between being in the MBA program and getting a press pass I can get in, but if not for that, I’d have to do like so many other people do, hope to get my second cousin’s tickets or get them from a scalper. So if you already couldn’t afford a ticket then it doesn’t matter to you anyway, it’s actually kind of good because it means more revenue to your team.
My one regret over high priced tickets is this however. Only older (blue hairs) can really afford those tickets and let’s face it, they don’t bring a lot of energy to the games. They sit down and fold their arms far too often when they should be cheering their team out of a tight spot. I am a Kentucky native, but I did my undergraduate work at Utah State. The crowd at Utah State only reaches 10,000, but they make more noise and have more energy than just about any school in the country.This is largely because the tickets are much cheaper so younger folks can afford them and the student section is probably a third of all of the tickets. You see as fans get older they get quieter. I love the UK students. They bring the noise, the young families bring the noise, the blue hairs, they’ll stand up for a nice dunk or a rival opponent, but when they have to pay for a game against someone like Miami (Ohio), they act like they’d rather be some place else.
So in the end, while it may not affect me anyway, because I already couldn’t afford them, the one negative against revenues is an aging group of fans that would prefer to enjoy their basketball in a more reserved manner than the heckling younger fans.
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