Have you watched any of the New York Yankees home games on TV so far this season? If you did, you probably saw something like this:
(AP)

A packed stadium, up until the premium seats closest to the action, which remained empty. Why, you ask? Well, at best it's financial planning that is out of touch with reality, coupled with corrupt politics. At worst it's class warfare. I'm guessing the former. The Yankees used their considerable clout in NYC to push through legislation that secured mostly public funding for their shiny new $1.5 billion stadium. At the same time, they plowed under several free public parks that had been available for the locals to use. Then they proceeded to price those locals out of the ballpark. In fact, they priced everyone out of the premium seating. Which led to ludicrous scenes like the one above. An understandably embarrassed Yankees organization has since slashed the pricing on their premier seating, but they've already exposed themselves as greedy poor planners.

How absurd is it that the locals are forced to pay to have their public parks removed and covered with a new stadium that they can never afford to get into? This is some serious backwards Robin Hood stuff. Force the poor to build a playground for the rich.

The seats in question originally sold (or didn't sell, actually) for prices ranging from $325-$2500. Note that those prices are the season ticket per-game prices, individual game prices were even higher. The most expensive premium seats in San Diego's Petco Park, by comparison, go in the $40-$50 per game range.

It just occurred to me that it's probably cheaper to travel to all the Yankees away games, with travel costs and hotel rooms, and buy the premium seats from the host  teams,  than to buy season tickets to their premium home seating. But I digress.

This is the latest example in an obvious trend of major sports franchises being hopelessly out of touch with reality in regards to economics. The NFL is the biggest offender, with even seats in the nosebleed section costing $75/game.

My main point here is that it is borderline criminal that major sports franchises can force locals to pay to build them a new stadium, and that the public then not only does not have any ownership stake in the stadiums they paid to build, but they still have to pay rediculous prices to make use of that which they paid to build. That's like paying to have an apartment building built, then still having to pay rent to live in it.