The ticket prices are too damn high |
The Golden State Warriors have their first play-in game Wednesday night against the Los Angeles Clippers, and there’s a very good chance that you, the Dubs fan for life, would be quietly relieved if they got crushed. And that’s not merely because the Warriors have had a miserable season, punctuated by Jonathan Kuminga getting shipped to Atlanta. It’s because seeing them play in person would leave you penniless.
I just checked prices for Warriors home playoff tickets, should they advance to the big-boy tournament. The cheapest seats are going for $270 a pop on Ticketbastard, and that’s if you want to watch the game from the Chase Center lighting rigs. If you’d like to sit on the lower level, with a nice view of center court, that’ll run you over $3,500. That’s a down payment on a car just to watch your team get annihilated by the Oklahoma City Thunder in the first round. By yourself.
The worst part is that these prices are a relative bargain compared with higher-profile events happening across the country. Individual tickets for last week’s Masters were above $20,000 at one point. This was a regular-ass ticket to the Masters, mind you. You didn’t even get a free pimento cheese sandwich to go with. Even the now deceased Hootie Johnson would be appalled.
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You might also have to pay five figures if you’d like a quality seat at this summer’s World Cup. This is because FIFA, the Cup’s governing body, recently surprised existing ticketholders by unveiling a double-extra-secret top pricing tier after those customers had already purchased what they had been told were top-tier tickets. FIFA literally changed the seating maps after the fact to wedge in this extra layer of price gouging. It has pulled this stunt in every World Cup city, including Los Angeles. When asked by the Athletic about the ruse, FIFA officials responded with this streaming pile of bulls—t:
“Until the launch of the Last Minute Sales Phase on April 1, FIFA sold tickets as access to seating within defined categories rather than specific seats, and all fans have been allocated seats within the category purchased or better. The introduction of new front-row products reflects the current sales phase, in which individual seats may be offered, and does not change the category-based model under which earlier tickets were sold.”
FILE: FIFA President Gianni Infantino, right, presents U.S. President Donald Trump a FIFA World Cup ticket, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on Aug. 22, 2025.
Not content to screw you over on that end, FIFA’s hosting agreement with the U.S. stipulates that local municipalities foot the bill for transportation and security, which has resulted in those municipalities having to charge upward of $100 for a train ride home from the venue, with no exceptions/discounts for older people, children, disabled people or probably even Lionel Messi himself.
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You and I have long been accustomed to everyday sports fans getting priced out of stadiums and arenas. Neither FIFA, nor the IOC, nor leagues like the NBA have ever really cared about working-class schlub fans, but in the past — due to factors such as regulation, effective PR and public pressure — they were obligated to at least make cursory efforts to look like they cared. Thanks to President DoorDash and his team of goblins ransacking the U.S. federal government, that meager social obligation is now gone. Donald Trump’s second administration has given the corporate establishment tacit permission, if not legal permission, to act just as brazenly.
As a result, we’re not even talking about moms and pops getting hosed at the box office anymore. Even if you’re a millionaire, you probably can’t afford any of this s—t. Just as a single dollar doesn’t go as far as it once did, neither does a million dollars. Premium World Cup seats have quintupled since the last World Cup. The average price of attending an NFL game has, in this decade, surpassed the hefty rate of inflation. Passes to this past weekend at Coachella hit $2,000, all to watch Justin Bieber surf around on YouTube while on the main stage. And I personally can no longer pass by a gas station without wincing.
FILE: A fan looks to buy tickets at a ticket booth at Nationals Park in Washington, DC.
These levies come on top of price increases everywhere else in this country. The average new car now costs $50,000. The median home price in America is a full $100,000 higher than it was at the beginning of this decade. You gotta pay seven bucks for a bag of f—king Doritos now. Prices everywhere are too damn high, and they won’t come down until Trumpism is replaced by a functional, responsible government.
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Until that blessed day arrives, you and I will simply have to watch, from home, the damage this inequality will wreak across the landscape. Perhaps nowhere will this decay be more glaring than on our playing fields. Already, many World Cup fans are bailing on the tournament rather than let FIFA, with the blessing of the government, rob them blind. The crowds for those games will inevitably be sparser and quieter for it, and the games themselves will be rendered duller in the process. Because I’m both a sports fan and a sucker, I have always believed that these games have the power to transcend the human ugliness that often underwrites them. This was true as recently as 2022, when Argentina’s astonishing World Cup victory provided effective cover for the horrendous Qatari regime that hosted it.
FILE: A dejected fan hopes for a ticket on Lansdowne Street during the American League Wild Card playoff game at Fenway Park in Boston on Oct. 5, 2021.
But look at the repulsive mess unfolding for this year’s World Cup, and NBA playoffs, and every other goddamn thing, and tell me that’s still possible. Tell me that sports can still help bring people together when none of us can even watch them together. These games cost too much, thanks to a bunch of people who mean to cost us everything.
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— Screw TurboTax, you need to hire a real human accountant— I got stranded in Germany for days. It gave me faith in humanity.— I tried Elon Musk's Wikipedia clone and boy is it racist— F—k Kash Patel and his $tupid shoes
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