The Rising Cost of Sports Viewership

 

Meet Konnor Griffin, the 19-year-old consensus No. 1 prospect in baseball. Not yet old enough to drink, Griffin is already being touted as a future Major League Baseball (MLB) superstar and the phenom who will bring the Pittsburgh Pirates back to glory.

 

Aside from his star potential, there is another factor that has made Griffin stand out not only within the baseball world but also within the sports world as a whole. In April 2026, the Pirates signed Griffin to a historic nine-year, $140 million contract extension. For an athlete of Griffin’s caliber, this may not initially seem all that surprising. However, the contract extension, the largest in the history of the Pirates organization, was given to Griffin less than a week after his MLB debut.

 

Sports fans were once again left saying, “They paid him how much?” Griffin’s contract is becoming more commonplace in American professional sports. From Shohei Ohtani’s $70 million annual salary in MLB for playing with the Los Angeles Dodgers to Jayson Tatum’s nearly $62 million annual salary in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for playing with the Boston Celtics, 9-figure contracts for superstar athletes are the norm. Just about any above-average quarterback in the National Football League (NFL) is making around $50 million a year.

 

The lucrative salaries of professional sports athletes may not be surprising to many. Sports have been embedded in American culture for at least the last 100 years. Whether turning to the back page of the newspaper, tuning into radio stations, opening social media, or streaming over the internet, sports are a part of our daily lives. So much so that the sports world has been transformed into something far greater than mere sports. Athletes are no longer just athletes; they have become icons, influencers, and even fashion models.

 

Athletes deserve to be compensated for the attention they garner and the money they generate. But as the salaries of professional athletes continue to rise, some of the issues that affect their fans and the local communities that they serve have lost focus. One of the most prevalent issues facing fans is the cost of professional sports viewership. Since 1997, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking the average admission cost of sporting events, the average cost of tickets to professional sporting events has risen by 163.11%.

 

The Super Bowl is a prime example of a sporting event that no longer prioritizes fans. In 1982, tickets to Super Bowl XVI could be purchased for around $40 ($138 adjusted for inflation). In 2025, tickets to Super Bowl LIX were available for around $6,304. What is the reason tickets to the Super Bowl have risen by almost six thousand dollars over the last 40 years? It can be argued that the Super Bowl is more popular now than it was in the 1980s. However, in 1982 the Super Bowl had already become a de facto American holiday, drawing 85.24 million viewers. The Super Bowl halftime show becoming its own event can help explain some of the increase in ticket prices, but nowhere close to the entire increase.

 

The trend suggests that sports events, like the Super Bowl, are no longer designed with fans in mind. When you watch the Super Bowl today, it feels like you are watching the Oscars or the Grammys, as every actor, musician, and social media influencer vies for the camera. Being at the biggest sporting events of the year is no longer a testament to someone's love for the sport, but rather a status symbol of their wealth and influence.

 

Having the ability to watch a sports game in person is one issue; having the ability to watch a sports game in your own home is another. Watching your favorite teams play from home used to be cheap and easy. There was a time when most of the major sporting events were available on free, over-the-air public broadcast networks. This is no longer the case. As the era of streaming has taken hold, professional sports broadcasts have become more expensive. In the 2020s, with all the various streaming platforms and subscription services, watching your favorite teams play on television can be as expensive as watching the game in person.

 

Almost every sports league is affiliated with a specific streaming service. Apple TV, Fubo, ESPN+, Paramount+, and DirecTV are just some of the many nationwide streaming options that offer exclusive access to major sporting events. There are also examples of local streaming services. For example, in New York, services such as SNY and The Gotham Sports App are available specifically for New York-based teams.

 

When it comes to the NFL, one streaming service is not enough to watch all the games. If you wanted to watch Thursday Night Football and Sunday Night Football, you would need both Amazon Prime Video and Peacock. The combined price of both streaming services is around $23 per month. As prices for streaming services and in-game attendance continue to rise, there may come a point when the average fan can no longer afford to watch their favorite team play.

 

Fans are not the only ones who have been affected by the rising costs of viewership associated with professional sports. In many cases, entire cities, sometimes even states, have been held hostage by their local sports teams. A notable example is the Las Vegas Raiders of the NFL. The Raiders played for almost 50 years in the city of Oakland before moving to Las Vegas in January 2020. During their time together, the Raiders organization and the city of Oakland had far from a perfect relationship. In 2018, the issue came to a head when the Raiders proposed a new 50,000-seat stadium and requested that the city of Oakland contribute at least $300 million in public funding to finance the stadium. For the “cash-strapped city” of Oakland, the Raiders request was unfeasible.

 

A contributing factor to Oakland’s financial dilemmas was the lingering debt from the last time the city spent taxpayer dollars on the Raiders. In 1995, the city issued nearly $200 million in public bonds to renovate the Oakland Coliseum and bring the Raiders back from Los Angeles where they had moved to, from Oakland, in 1982. While the city was successful in bringing the Raiders back to Oakland, the investment failed to generate the revenues it had projected and the $200 million in debt ballooned to almost $350 million due to interest and unpaid loans. As a result, Oakland and Alameda County were forced to subsidize the bond payments for 30 years until the debt was paid off in 2026. When Oakland denied the Raiders more funding to build a new stadium, the team left for Las Vegas in 2020 without repaying millions in outstanding loans it owed to the city of Oakland.

 

Could the Raiders have made more of an effort to help Oakland pay off the debt it had incurred on the team’s behalf? Sports teams portray themselves as deeply connected to fans and communities, yet many teams fail to make genuine efforts to improve the cities they call home. If fans and cities are going to spend hundreds if not millions of dollars on tickets, subscription services, jerseys, and on taxes to build new stadiums, the exchange between teams, fans, and the cities they call home should not be so one-sided.

 

Some argue that the amount teams are spending on player contracts, leaves little room for leniency on prices. But many teams, especially those in big markets, can view player contracts as investments. Take the Los Angeles Dodgers and the team’s contract with generational superstar Shohei Ohtani. Signed in December 2023, Ohtani’s contract is for $700 million over ten years ($70 million annually). If there is any contract that the Dodgers could lose money on, it would be this one, which at the time of its signing was the biggest contract in the history of professional sports.

 

Yet, when analyzing the return on investment and financial reality of Ohtani’s contract, losing money is not remotely in the equation for the Dodgers. Reports have indicated that the Dodgers made back Ohtani’s entire $700 million salary in one year. Furthermore, since inking one of the largest contracts in the history of baseball and major league sports, the valuation of the overall Dodgers organization has skyrocketed. During Ohtani’s first season with the Dodgers in 2024, the organization's valuation was near $5.5 billion; by 2026, the valuation had risen to $7.8 billion.

 

When fans spend their money, it goes into the pockets of athletes and professional sports leagues. However, when those same teams and professional sports leagues spend money, it does not always go toward bettering the experience of the fans or the conditions that exist in the cities that sports teams call home. In some way or form, the money ultimately finds its way into the pockets of athletes and team owners. While it may not be possible to remove the profit motives from professional sports, league commissioners, athletes, and owners need to recognize that without their fans, sports are nothing. If professional sports continue to price out fans from watching their favorite teams play, they risk losing the driving force behind what makes sports so compelling. Fans and their passion for sports are what drive revenues for professional sports leagues which directly influence both the salaries of athletes and team valuations. Sports leagues, athletes, and team owners need to do more for their fanbases and the communities they serve, or they risk driving away the key component of their success.