Nothing is cheap these days. In fact, even the word ‘cheap’ is now about five per cent more expensive in this sentence than it was in the previous one.
Having spent a week in New York, which hit the wallet with the same kind of destructive force you’d get if you took a mallet to a Ming vase, it’s back to the auld claes and porridge now.
I picked up the tabs for a couple of meals in a variety of restaurants during our sojourn and they were so eye-wateringly expensive, the bills may as well have been printed on the US Constitution.
“Did you get the chits?” asked my wife as she sooked up the dregs of the 1869 Chateau Lafite Rothschild with a straw. “I did when I saw the price,” I spluttered with an incredulous grimace.
It could’ve been worse, of course. We could’ve been forking out for a ticket to next year’s Ryder Cup in the Big Apple.
Over the past few days, you may have read or heard about the pricing structure for the 2025 transatlantic tussle at Bethpage State Park.
It’s been hard to ignore given that the rumblings and grumblings have just about registered on the seismometers in the offices of the US Geological Survey.
The headline maker was the $749.41 it will cost for a single daily ticket during the three days of competition. Last year’s contest in Rome had tickets for just over £200.
The whopping price includes all the food and soft drink you can throw down your thrapple. Alcohol, though, will cost extra. Given the cost of booze at golf events, a couple of rounds of Bud Light will probably be somewhere in the region of 750 bucks anyway.
Briefs for the practice days on the Tuesday and Wednesday, meanwhile, are priced at $255.27 while that figure jumps to $423.64 for the final limbering up session on the Thursday.
If you fancy it, you have until today – the 22nd – to fling your name into the hat of hope. “Register now for your chance to be randomly selected for an opportunity to buy tickets,” states a wonderfully joyless message on the official Ryder Cup website. Good luck.
All of this, of course, has been greeted with predictable outrage, particularly as Bethpage Park is one of the USA’s most treasured municipal venues; the People’s Country Club as it’s known.
A round on the Black Course, where the Ryder Cup will be played, costs local residents $80 on the weekend. Come next September, that probably won’t buy you an officially branded key fob in the merchandise tent.
While there’s a good chance most of the frothing indignation will be coming from people who have no intention of going to the Ryder Cup anyway, there is, like most events/occasions/experiences these days, a market to justify the price. Look at some of the startling green fees you see for the high-end courses here in the home of the game?
As long as folk are willing to stump up great dollops of money for this, that and the other, then the golf industry will continue to feverishly yank away at the overflowing udders of the cash cow. I realise I’ve just conjured up some appalling imagery with that dire analogy, but you get the idea.
Over the last couple of years, the men’s professional game, riven by division, debate, greed, entitlement and self-interest brought on by the emergence of the LIV series, has left many a golf fan feeling wearied, disinterested and alienated.
They are, by and large, a stoic and loyal bunch but their dedication and devotion is often taken for granted.
While Ryder Cup organisers will throw in all sorts of justifications for the ticket price – market forces, rising costs, the staging of an event in super-expensive New York, the benefits it has for various ‘grow the game’ initiatives – the simple figure of nearly $750 ain’t a good look for a game that has already suffered considerable reputational damage during this period of money-driven tumult and schism.
The corporate classes will no doubt clink their glasses in delight while the average fan gets priced out of the showpiece. It’s a familiar story in an age when tournaments are less sporting events and more the kind of social extravaganzas that would make Caligula gasp.
The irony, of course, is that the Ryder Cup is the one event where money doesn’t matter. The star names of the US and Europe don’t get paid, although there are loud calls for them to get a cheque shoved in their pockets. There is even talk of an ownership stake. Player power continues to grow.
The punters, meanwhile, will have to pay a hefty price for their piece of the action.
For the PGA of America and the DP World Tour, the Ryder Cup is the gift that keeps on giving.
Back in ye day, though, the biennial bout was about as lucrative as a handful of stoor. It was a cost rather than a money earner and it wasn’t until 1985, when Tony Jacklin's European team ended 28 years of US dominance by snatching the little gold chalice at The Belfry, that the event broke even and returned its first profit of £300,000.
The way prices are going, that’ll probably be the cost of a weekly bloomin’ ticket by 2033. Get saving, folks.
