Improving America’s Pastime: Baseball | Suggestion #10 – Stop Catering to Rich Corporations

2012-September-21

tags: baseball, baseball and corporations, Blue Beach Song, corporations in baseball, improving baseball, Martie Hevia, MLB catering to corporations, suggestions for Baseball

By Martie Hevia | Blue Beach Song™

Suggestion #10: Stop Catering to Rich Corporations

“The new Yankee Stadium…
has 3,000 fewer seats than its
1923 predecessor but almost three
times as many skybox suites.”
New York Times Op-Ed:
Throw Out Skybox Tax Subsidies
By Richard Schmalbeck & Jay Soled,
April 4, 2010

When MLB teams started catering to rich corporations for their big corporate dollars, they stopped thinking about the average American family. So, I suggest, no more corporate luxury boxes, prime seats, and waiters serving fancy foods – yes, I have been in a luxury box during a game and I couldn’t tell that I was at a ballgame.

The corporations might put money in the pockets of the MLB and the owners of the teams, but the game will lose its fans. The corporate box attendees are not true fans. These corporations use their prime tickets or luxury boxes to impress visiting clients or colleagues. These corporate attendees show up late and leave early, spend the time talking on their cell phones – not following the game, and dress like they are going out to a party afterward.

The Business of Baseball
The San Francisco Giants’ Ballpark

The race for the almighty dollar has turned ballparks into multi-purpose amusement park-malls with diverse restaurants, a plethora of activities – from miniature golf to water slides, art galleries, and stores galore! The ballgame itself has become almost secondary, merely an excuse for attending an amusement park-mall, which has unfortunately been mislabeled a ballpark.

In truth, it’s annoying, it takes away from the game, it’s distracting, and it pushes up the price of all the seats, especially the good seats. (And the fact that the Steinbrenners demolished Yankee Stadium to build a new one that could accommodate more corporate luxury boxes and fewer seats… well, as you can see, that has not colored my biased opinion one tiny bit!)

NOTE: This was the tenth of a 30-part series of posts offering suggestions (sometimes tongue-in-cheek) on how I would improve the game of baseball. This series is based on my original (very long) post: Baseball: How I (A Girl) Would Improve America’s Pastime, it provides the context for this series of posts. I hope you enjoy the series and offer your own suggestions! All the best, -Martie

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