What is the Price of a Rivalry?
I tweeted an honest question out earlier, and I got a pretty significant amount of responses. The natural next step was a blog, so here we are: If two baseball fans were to drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles, splitting gas and food and each buying one bleacher ticket for a game at Dodger Stadium, would it cost less than $200 total?
The reason I ask is because I’m butt hurt. Very much so, in fact. I’m a diehard Dodgers fan born, raised, and still living in San Francisco, who wants nothing more than to go see Clayton Kershaw embarrass the rival Giants on their home turf on Friday night.
The only problem? I get paid a small stipend every month, and Mapes continues to “lose” my 3u3d paycheck. The next problem? AT&T Park is charging nearly $100 a pop for standing room only for that game.
I know. Don’t get me started.
Anyway, let’s get down to the math:
From the city of San Francisco to Dodger Stadium is 382 miles, according to our good friend Google Maps. Assuming we start with a full tank in a standard mid-size car getting about 33 miles to the gallon with a 14-gallon tank (the specs of the car I would personally drive in this scenario), we can figure out how much the gas would cost each way.
As of last week, the average price of a gallon of Unleaded gas in California was 3.94. So this car needs a tank about every 450 miles. It’s very fair to assume, even accounting for fluctuation between highways and city streets and any adventuring in between, that it would take two fill-ups to get there and back.
That’s $110.32 in gas. Let’s just throw in $30 for a stop at In-N-Out before the game and Taco Bell on the way home (SO WHAT? DON’T JUDGE ME!) and head to the home stretch. Bleacher seats for the next Dodgers home game against the Giants top out around $25 each right now.
Adding in the fare for tickets and food, you’re looking at a $95 trip per person. I live in San Francisco. And it would cost me $5 more to just walk to the ball park and watch my team play (standing up, no less) at AT&T Park.
It’s a beautiful stadium, but that is atrocious. I’ll keep my spot on the couch instead, thanks.
– Jeremy Dorn (@Jamblinman)
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As much as you might dislike Giants fans, they love baseball. They will spend exorbitant amounts of money to watch their team. A lot of others baseball clubs can’t say the same about their fan base.
They don’t all love baseball. Where were all these fans who were willing to spend so much money before 2010? Giants hate aside, this is more a commentary on the outrageous prices the ballpark charges in comparison to others (though I’m sure a place like Yankee Stadium charges similarly for Red Sox games…). If it costs LESS to drive 350 miles to see the same two teams play than just staying in the city you’re already in, that’s absolutely ludicrous.