Passion for sports: making me broke?

How much does my passion for sports cost me?

I am a huge sports fan. I live in the Detroit area, where we always have sports teams to watch and cheer on (Tigers, Lions, Pistons, Red Wings, Michigan, Michigan State, etc.). I grew up watching sports on TV and attending live sporting events. It is the language that my father, brother, friends, and I all share. Anytime we are together the conversation turns to sports. The greatest childhood memories I have with my father involve playing or watching sports, I even bought an entire season ticket package so I could get tickets to the final game at Tiger Stadium. Needless to say, sports is a big part of my life.

What has never occurred to me is how much money do I actually spend on sports? Well, I am going to give it a shot right here. Below is my typical yearly sports activity.

1) Tickets to live sporting events:

a. Michigan Football – 3 games x $50 = $150

b. Tigers – 6 games x $20 - $120

c. Lions – 1 game x $60 = $60

d. Red Wings – 2 games x $75 = $150

e. TOTAL = $480 per year

2) “Extra” costs in attending 12 sporting events

a. Parking - $15 x 12 = $180

b. Food - $10 x 12 = $120

c. Beer - $8 x 9 = $72 (No beer sales at U of M games)

d. Gas – avg. 60 miles x 12 events = 720 miles x $.42/mile = $302

e. TOTAL = $674 per year

3) Cost of watching at home

a. Satellite package upgrade to include sports channels/HD = $40/month

b. TOTAL = $480 per year

This is a quick analysis and will vary from year to year, but I am amazed to find that I spend approximately $1600 per year watching sporting events!!!! WOW!!!! I will definitely have to consider this going forward before I commit every time someone offers me tickets to an event.

The scary thing is that this is a fairly conservative estimate. I have excluded the fact that my wife attends several of these events with me, which drives the cost up significantly. This also does not factor in special situations such as last year when the Tigers made the playoffs and my wife and I went to a game for $125 per ticket, plus the “extras”. This figure could easily be $2000 per year or more. We also attend several concerts each year, which I did not include here either, I may save that for another post, but those numbers could easily rival these, OUCH.