The sports ticket price enigma

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.6 • 29.8K Ratings

🗓️ 16 December 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Inflation is making prices go up, except not for...sports tickets? So, we set out on a daylong sporting event marathon to learn why.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Planet Money from NPR.
0:06.4	We love inflation data.
0:10.2	Like not just the headline inflation rate, but the line items.
0:14.7	And you know, the other day, we're looking through a spreadsheet of October's numbers
0:18.8	and, you know, there's the price of ham.
0:21.2	Up 9.1% year over year.
0:24.3	Gasoline, unleaded, regular, up 17.1%.
0:28.4	Take a look at this, Margarine.
0:31.0	Margarine?
0:32.0	I can't believe it's not cheaper.
0:33.5	Up 47.1%.
0:36.3	The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks thousands and thousands of items, which are generally
0:40.5	getting more and more expensive.
0:42.2	Because you know about this.
0:43.6	Inflation.
0:44.6	But then, we noticed something strange, an item that has been getting cheaper, a lot cheaper.
0:50.6	Its official Bureau of Labor Statistics name is admission to sporting events.
0:55.8	Cost tickets down 17.7% year over year.
1:00.4	Which is totally bizarre because attendance for lots of sports has been going up.
1:05.1	People are going back to the games that apparently paying less.
1:09.1	We had questions.
1:10.1	Yeah, so I'm Brandon Rogers.
	...

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