It turns out that handing over taxpayer dollars to billionaire owners tends to be far less popular among regular citizens than among well-connected government officials.
Tldr: when these initiatives are decided by politicians they get wine and dine vip treatment, swaying their decision. When it's decided by voters and ballot initiatives, it tends to be shot down - the jig is up, many voters don't believe investing in stadiums helps local economies enough. Ultimately the electorate is tired of footing the bill for private business and billionaire profits. Shocking.
I deleted my comment going off on this same tangent because blah, but you are not alone I fully agree. It's so expensive these days, I don't know anyone personally who goes to NFL games on the regular, and with TV blackouts the fact a stadium exists nearby is ironically an active detriment to my NFL experience lol.
Make the ticket prices affordable so more locals can enjoy it again, maybe then we can talk about public funding.
The Lions have had lots of regular people that went to all the games, but that's probably going to end soon. When they sucked season tickets could be around 2k/ticket for decent seats, the prices went up by around 2-3x now though.
If this chart is accurate, lions single game tickets are averaging around $110/ticket last year. That's on the lower end and would still an easy $400+ outing for a party of 3
I'm not familiar with their season tickets, how's the wait list and availability? Lot of markets require waiting in a multi year queue (and maintenance fees or memberships) to even have a chance at a season ticket. People hang on to those and will them to heirs 🙄
Because back then the money was made by selling tickets to fans and concessions. Now teams get more money from broadcast deals so they stopped caring about the fans and jacked up all the prices fans pay.