Your Best Entertainment Value:
Part Two - What Else You Gonna Do?

Michael Cox

If you'll remember back two weeks ago, we were discussing (well, I was carrying on, and you were hopefully reading) one of the biggest fallacies about Major League Baseball: that it costs too much to go down to the ballyard and watch.

Last time we looked at what people tell you it costs, versus the actual prices you pay in the real world. Today we go into your other spectator entertainment options, and see whether or not you could be spending a cheaper evening elsewhere. (As if the result of this exercise is in any doubt...)

Before we begin, let's set the value we're comparing with. We're going to think globally, but for the purposes of our little experiment, we'll act locally. The Mariners have $6 seats available for every single game. They're almost never sold out, and they're not even the worst seats in the house. And most MLB teams have something similar.

So, our baseline is the cheapest everyday ticket. This tosses out the cheapskate's favorite: the movie matinee. Matinees don't occur at the right time to be true competition for the evening's entertainment anyway. We're not going to count tickets you can't get without special effort or waiting all night in the rain - we're talking about things you can do with a relative minimum of planning.

We'll also think in terms of the trappings of an evening: food, beverages, and what-have-you. We won't assume you're going to be buying a cap or program at the game, and we won't presume that you need that Verve t-shirt.

First we turned to the other spectator sports. Here in Seattle, we have three of the Big Four: MLB (Mariners), NBA (Sonics), and NFL (sort of - Seahawks). the comparisons aren't even close. Both the Sonics and Seahawks have much-publicized cheap seats: The Sonics have their $7 "family section," and the Hawks have the $10 end zone area. However, anyone who's tried to actually get one of these seats can tell you, it's not bloody likely. The Hawks' cheapos are sold out in season tix (a hilarious sight to see: a stadium sparsely populated, but with solid blocks of people in the end zones); and the Sonics' are hotly contested.

So, we'll use their next-lowest price point:

Sonics - $18 for a second-level seat.
Seahawks - Damn, their web site is slow. Paul Allen has always seemed to have this problem creating decent-loading websites (Disney's trying to fix SportsZone as we speak. Failing, but trying). Uhnn, we'll go with the $10.

Concessions are a wash - The Sonics' are more pricey but better, and the Hawks use the same vendor. Winner: Baseball.

Seattle doesn't have NHL hockey, but if they did, the comparison would be more laughable than the NBA or NFL. I've paid $35 US to sit in the nosebleeds and watch the Canucks bite. We do have minor hockey, though: the WHL Thunderbirds. You're looking at $12 or more there. Since they play at the Key Arena, concessions are the same as for the Sonics.

Let's move quickly through the other sports options (concessions are slightly cheaper, about $2.50 for a large soda and $2 for a hot dog):

A-League soccer (Sounders): $10.

ABL Women's Basketball (Reign): $10.

University of Washington football: You can't get 'em.

So with our sports options exhausted, we turn to the arts. First the premium options: Classical music and big-time theatah. Wanna see Yo-Yo Ma at the new Benaroya Hall (also built with taxpayer dollars)? $350. What can we afford? How about a "Basically Baroque" concert, from the third tier (obstructed view) for $12. And if you thought ballpark concessions were expensive, you haven't had drinks at the Symphony. But hey, cheer up - Cats is coming! That'll be $28.75 for 3rd mezzanine.

Fringe theater, however, fares much better, with prices that range from $6-$12 to sit on rickety bleachers and see reenactments of Twilight Zone episodes or the 18,654,987th production of Twelfth Night. And the food is cheap: usually donated coffee selling for $1, wine for $2, and home-baked cookies for 50 cents. Fringe shows are probably your best non-sports value, but still aren't that much cheaper than a night at the ballyard.

Music is another option, and the choices here are between national touring bands and local musicians at the nearby bar. For the former, I've selected The Verve, who I saw a short time ago for a very reasonable price of $20. Of course, the opening act, Massive Attack, cancelled and were replaced by a crap DJ and the Verve's lead guitarist didn't make the show, but hey. Bar shows are priced similarly to fringe theater ($6-12), but with the added physical cost of alcoholic beverages and the mental cost of potentially having to see at least one really crappy band.

As for the cinema, we all know you can't go to see movies where people don't yell at the screen for less than $7 at night (and about half of those movies, you feel like shouting at the screen). Concession prices equal or outstrip those of sports (after all, it was movie theaters that started the $4 popcorn craze!) but we'll call it a wash. Pulling up the rear are comedy clubs, where you pay at least $10 plus a two-drink minimum to see a comic who isn't even good enough to get a sitcom, and tells the Lewinsky jokes that even Jay Leno rejected.

So, the results:

There's not much you can do, sitting-down entertainment-wise, that beats baseball for value. Plus, here in Seattle and in several big-league cities you can see at least one player people will be talking about a hundred years from now, when Arnold Schwarzenegger's movies are allowed to meet a natural death by biodegradation.

If you don't like baseball or, like me, don't mind braving bad music or bad Shakespeare, you can go out and be entertained more cheaply. But not much, and not at such a high level of quality.

Michael Cox would like it to be known that he'd never misspell "posses", or indeed allow the webmaster prank which occurred recently if he wasn't so damn tired. Offer toothpicks for his eyes at mc@strikethree.com.