One of the things about lacrosse over the years is that it has been one of the lowest-cost forms of entertainment available. As a college non-revenue sport, you could attend most games for free, or for the very least, somewhere between five and 10 dollars.
But when you look at many major college programs, they are charging larger and larger admission fees to go to games. Your defending national champion, North Carolina, charges anywhere from $10 to $15 per ticket. Hofstra charges $15 for you to go to a game. Syracuse charges $20 for its home contests, Maryland now charges $19 for its games which are now held at the school’s football stadium.
And, if you want to buy a ticket for today’s Maybelline Women’s Lacrosse League championship game between California and New York, you’ll be paying anywhere from $47 to $75. Sure, you get the Premier Lacrosse League game thrown in as a sweetener, but most of the people attending the games today are going to be more invested in one gender of competition more than the other.
Why is this happening?
I think there are three issues coming to the fore here. One is the normal inflationary pressure on any and all goods and services in an economy over the course of time. The days of the five-cent glass of soda or the ten-cent movie ticket are long gone. As industries such as the making of carbonated beverages or movies has gotten more complicated and more expensive, it is normal for the costs of these products to rise so that the consumer covers the cost.
A second issue here is the infrastructure. Even though the soccer and football stadia in which most Division I teams play were already in place, it costs money to run an event there. You have to hire groundskeepers, make sure the water and lights are operating, bring in security (handling a football stadium is a much bigger area than a smaller ground), and, of course, ticket-takers.
But the major issue here is the players. The collegians are now getting name, likeness, and image deals and are paraprofessional athletes. The pros are devoting their lives to lacrosse. They deserve to be compensated for their labor.
However, I wonder if the sports economy for women’s lacrosse is sustainable. Almost every college athletic program is hemorraging money, despite the astronomical rights fees being paid by television broadcasters. A Jan. 28th report pegs Rutgers University as operating their athletics department at a half-billion-dollar deficit since 2014. That’s “billion” with a “b.”
The problem with trying to reclaim some of this money is that it is going to fall onto the public, whether it is higher fees for streaming or higher ticket prices.
The latter concerns me greatly, because it is girls and young women who are coming to the games onto which this burden is falling. Groups of kids bring a different atmosphere to these games, and high ticket prices will do little to attract full teams or families.
If enough people opt out of buying ever more expensive tickets, you’re going to see a lot of empty seats. Look, for example, at this screenshot of yesterday’s semifinal game in the WLL which featured some of the league’s megastars. Despite the record-setting action on the pitch, entire sections of the grandstand at The St. James were left empty:
The unfortunate reality is that many entities in women’s lacrosse are now pricing out families and lacrosse enthusiasts with a paywall. It’s like putting a candle under a bowl.
And if the people who run lacrosse aren’t careful, the supply of oxygen under that bowl will expire and the candle will go out.