Just in case you the Chicago Bears fan needs even more grist for your mill right now, we’ve got you covered. It turns out that a ballgame at Soldier Field is the most expensive option in the entire National Football League, according to Consumer research group ValuePenguin.
Yes, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco get all the extremely high cost of living analysis hype, but in this case, Chicago tops the chart.
Value Penguin studies all 32 NFL teams’ cost of tickets, concessions, and parking, and here’s a sampling of what they found:
A trip to see the Chicago Bears at Soldier Field will set fans back a stratospheric $483.20.
Local fans will need to work 16.3 hours (the longest) to afford a game because median incomes of fans in the Chicago metro area (which are below the national average) aren’t reflective of the cost of attending a game.
- The bulk of that expense comes from the cost of the tickets, which are the most expensive in the league. Other extravagances include $9.25 beers (the 4th most expensive in the league) and $49 for parking.
- Watching a Bears game is also 125% more expensive than watching a Cubs game, and 55% more expensive than watching a Bulls game.
Obviously, these numbers, prices, facts and figures become even worse than they already are when you consider the current state of the team on the field. The John Fox era of Chicago Bears football has seen a record of just 10-25 thus far, and it comes on the heels of the Marc Trestman regime, which managed to go just 13-19. All the losing that the team has suffered over the past four and a half years is indicative of just how extensive the rebuilding project truly is.
The team currently has Chicago’s longest pro sports franchise championship drought (1985), and they haven’t reached the playoffs since 2010. In the past decade, the Chicago Bears have won only one single playoff game.
All the recent ineptitude certainly makes that $483 cover charge a lot harder to swallow. You have heard the phrase “you get what you pay for,” and in this case you actually have the total opposite.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now and Minute Media. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and Chicago Now.
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