1873.13

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Ballpark Admission Fees To Be Set at Twenty-five Cents -- not higher -- for Pro Games

Salience	Noteworthy
Tags	Business of BaseballBusiness of Baseball
Location	Washington DCWashington DC
City/State/Country:	[[Washington, DC, {{{Country}}}|Washington]], [[DC, {{{Country}}}|DC]], [[{{{Country}}}]]
Modern Address
Game
Immediacy of Report	Contemporary
Age of Players	AdultAdult
Holiday
Notables
Text	"Manager (Nick) Young, of Washington, very wisely advocates the adoption of the twenty-five cent tariff of admission to professional contests this season, and the half-dozen professional clubs of the country had better adopt is advice.  They will find it difficult to collect large audiences even at twenty-five cents this season . . . As for fifty cents, that is not a sum that will not be longer countenanced."
Sources	New York Sunday Mercury, February 16, 1873.
Warning
Comment	[A] From Richard Hershberger, 150 years ago in baseball (2/16/2023 FB posting):  "The discussion over the price of admission. This discussion has been going on since 1866, when some clubs were delighted to discover that spectators were willing to pay the princely sum of 25 cents to see a game. This raised the question, might not they be willing to pay even more? Experiments ran all the way up to one dollar, but that clearly was overreach. The discussion settled into 25 versus 50 cents. It will go on, on these terms, into the 1890s. This seems curious from the modern perspective, but this was an era of essentially zero inflation. Inflation as a fact of life is really a post-WWII thing. Speaking of inflation, what does this cost of admission translate to today [2023]? This is a bit tricky. First off, the basic admission is for standing room. Admission to the grandstand typically was another 25 cents. Various auxiliary bleacher sections will be added in future years, but here in 1873 things are still pretty basic. So if we assume the desire to sit down, we are really looking at 50 versus 75 cents. The next problem is that inflation calculators aren't really meaningful across widely separated eras. Labor was cheap, so even middle class households hired "help." Food was expensive, this being before the Green Revolution in agriculture. Housing was cheap, but you got what you paid for. We spend far more for transportation nowadays, with the ability (leading often to the necessity) to go vastly longer distances in relative comfort. Cell phone plans in the 1873s were very cheap, but the service was terrible. And so on. So simply punching this into an inflation calculator doesn't tell us as much as one might think. So taking this with a huge grain of salt, use a multiplier of x25. This is too low, in terms of daily life, since we have more disposable income today, but it gives a very rough idea. So that 50 cents to get in and get a seat translates conservatively to twelve dollars or so. I leave as an exercise for the student to compare this with prices today, but with the admonition to include the cheap seats in your analysis, not just the field level seats behind home plate, and to consider the physical characteristics of that seat (possibly with a cup holder, the greatest addition to ball parks within my lifetime), the sightlines, and the proximity and nature of restroom facilities."   [B] From John Thorn, email of 2/17/2023: "BTW, the National League's stand of 1876 (a 50-cent admission) nearly killed it in the cradle, but was vital to establishing it, in the longer run, as a professional entertainment." Edit with form to add a comment
Query	[] Do we know how often 50-cent admissions were charged prior to 1873? [] Was Young's recommendation in fact smoothly adopted for the 1873 season? Edit with form to add a query
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Submitted by	Richard Hershberger
Submission Note	FB Posting, 2/16/2023
Has Supplemental Text

1873.13 Ballpark Admission Fees To Be Set at Twenty-five Cents -- not higher -- for Pro Games"

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