It could cost US$175 to park your car at AT&T Stadium in Dallas for next summer's World Cup semi-final.Matt Patterson/The Associated Press
This week, the rest of world rediscovered what it costs to attend a high-demand sports event in North America. The latest outrage – parking.
Apparently, it’ll run you US$175 to park a car at AT&T Stadium in Dallas for the semi-final of next summer’s World Cup.
The Guardian put that number in its headline, so its readers would be prepared for the shock of encountering it in the body of the article, and not pass out on the bus.
It’ll be US$125 for the quarter-final in Kansas City, and US$75 for an opening round in Miami.
Where are these lots? Nobody knows. These outrageous sums only guarantee you a general pass. So you could be attending a game in Foxborough, Mass., while parking your car in Walpole.
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The tone of this telling is beyond surprise. It is bewilderment.
This follows the same brand of reporting about the cost of attending the World Cup. Sample headline – “A single match cost me thousands at the World Cup of the 1%.”
We’ll do it again when someone discovers that hotel rooms in New York and San Francisco are not price-adjusted to the wage of the median American worker. And then maybe one more round when someone tries to buy a hot dog and needs a co-signer.
Meanwhile, nobody thinks it’s weird that it’s 12 bucks for the good eggs. (We could get the seven-dollar eggs, but they just aren’t the same.)
The cost of attending big sports events, such as the Wimbledon final, has grown to astronomical numbers. But tickets, and the auxiliary purchases that come with it, like parking, continue to sell.Julian Finney/Getty Images
Sports complaining has become constant. Whenever a Canadian team raises its season ticket prices, I will reliably receive a few e-mails urging me to investigate. Investigate what? The phenomenology of greed?
Everybody liked the PWHL because it was so cheap to begin with, and have now started complaining that it’s not cheap like it used to be. Still cheap, but not cheap enough.
I don’t disagree with any of these takes. Two-hundred-fifty dollars in real money to park your car is crazy. So is flying cross-continentally in order to pay four grand to watch a football game involving two teams you cannot yet know. Once you’ve done that, I’m not sure why you’d get hung up on the parking.
There is one logical way to respond to this lunacy – don’t go.
People don’t want to hear that. What they want to do is complain bitterly and specifically, and then cave, ensuring that everyone knows the ungodly amount they spent to be there.
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As best I can tell there are three sorts of participants in the live sports market – the people who can afford to be there when it doesn’t matter, the people who can afford to be there when it does, and the people who wish they could be either of them.
In a world full of fakes and dupes, attendance at sports remains a reliable way to remind your peers that you are making it.
Then the really-big-deal event comes along and the people who are used to feeling special are forced to accept that they are not special enough. For certain tickets, money isn’t the measure of it. Knowing the right people is the only way in. That’s where the status pain really begins.
I covered a big fight in Las Vegas years ago. I was standing around outside the MGM Grand a couple of days beforehand watching a local news crew do streeters with passersby.
The interviewer asked each person what they’d rather have – a hundred thousand dollars or two tickets to the Fight of the Century. Most people picked the tickets.
One woman got so excited at the thought of it that she began to hop up and down in place, like they might actually give her the tickets.
This, to me, was America and still is.
The fight was a dud. Sting was sitting a couple of rows behind me, looking confused about how far he’d fallen. The whole thing had a real Marie Antoinette, fin-de-siecle feel, which as it turned out was half-right. I loved it. Of course, I hadn’t paid anything to be there.
Afterward, we stood in line for a cab for 90 minutes and I thought, ‘Who does this for fun?’
Actor Timothee Chalamet sits courtside prior to the start of Game 5 between the Boston Celtics and New York Knicks in the 2025 NBA Playoffs at TD Garden.Bob DeChiara/Reuters
That makes me odd. One of the things that has changed in my lifetime is that our highest, collective social aspiration is to be seen attending A Very Big Sports Match at least once.
Platinum tier – Olympics, World Cup, a Wimbledon final, The Masters. This makes you a real roller. Someone who knows people who know people.
Gold tier – the postseason of any of the major leagues. You have either money or a line of credit, and maybe some connections.
Red tier – the regular-season hockey game people are talking about or seats behind home plate. You’re the sort who appreciates nice things, and isn’t afraid to treat themselves into the poorhouse to have them.
Blue tier – standing room only, the nose bleeds. You’re a real fan, who believes comfort is for the weak.
Below that, there are the great unwashed who ingest sports like mush – through their TVs and phones. No sights and sounds and $25 beers for this peasantry.
The only thing binding these groups is the false sense that sports is for everyone.
Sports was for everyone when guys who owned car dealerships could also own a team. Now that the clubs are owned by megacorps, sports is for a few people. It’s for the Richie Riches who say, ‘Two grand? Unconscionable! Let’s invite both sets of grandparents.’
If it bothers you, it is within your power to bring this system down. First step – stop watching. Second step – nobody’s gotten to the second step.
In the interim, join the resistance. It’s meeting at your local bar, where all great rebellions are fomented. The washroom’s right there, the beer is semi-reasonably priced and no one feels they are better than you because they sat closer to the TV.