Sports and entertainment are down across the board. They can’t sell tickets because people can’t afford a night out, so this is their attempt to drive sales. They aren’t throwing families a bone, they are trying not to have to draft players with a much smaller budget next year. You can’t sell any concessions if people won’t buy tickets.
Man, that is not my experience here in Seattle. Ticket prices are up up up and they sell. I’m referring mostly to concert and stand up shows, but I hear from the sports people that it’s even worse for them. Prices are up, tickets sell.
In the college football world the secondary market for tickets has seemed softer this year than last year. A lot of it is the change to the playoff format making it so that people have more events to split their budget across, but a lot of people lost money selling tickets under the face value for the conference games when their teams didn’t make it. And just this weekend, it seemed like tickets were pretty cheap for the first round of the playoffs.
Those prices might be up from 5 years ago, but my impression is that prices are down from last year.