NASCAR ticket prices can be a source of contention (cont'd)

So by contrast, that $88.16 NASCAR seat appears a little high, certainly, but not outrageously so. Again, it can't be overstated that tracks have only one or two weekends a year in which to turn a profit, as compared to eight home games in football, 41 in basketball, and 81 in baseball. And none of this is cheap. It's still going to cost you an average of $88.33 to see the Chicago Bears, $42.49 to see the Chicago Cubs, and $60.25 to see the Philadelphia Flyers. Oh, and those are face-value tickets. If the building is sold out, which with the best or most popular teams is usually the case, it's going to cost double or triple that to get a ticket over the Internet or on the street. You're not going to find much for $20, unless you want to sit in the upper deck of a Kansas City Royals game.

Yes, some NASCAR tracks have season-ticket packages, where you have to buy a full slate of events just to get the Sprint Cup race. But then you have the personal seat license, a fixture in newer NFL stadiums, where fans have to pay thousands of dollars just for the opportunity to buy tickets. If you want a lower bowl season ticket in the New York Jets' new stadium, for example, you're going to have to pony up a PSL fee of between $4,000 and $25,000 just to have the privilege of buying the seat. It all kind of puts that $88.16 in perspective.

No question, $88.16 isn't cheap, especially in this unstable economy. The number of empty seats in some of these overbuilt racetracks on a given week certainly reflects that. But there are also some fans out there who can be a little unrealistic, pining for the days when tickets cost only a fraction of what they do today, and the drivers were so accessible that anyone could walk up to Richard Petty in the garage and talk shop. Those days are gone forever. This is now a big-boy sport with a massive, national audience, and ticket prices have risen accordingly. Just because you once got into North Wilkesboro for $20 doesn't mean you're going to be able to buy a seat at Las Vegas Motor Speedway for the same price.

Yet the racetracks aren't completely without fault here. Back when Darlington Raceway had two Cup weekends a year and was struggling to sell tickets, the less expensive backstretch grandstand was always full, while the more modern high-rise towers were pockmarked by empty seats. You could see the same thing in the final days of old North Carolina Speedway, where the big backstretch grandstand sat half-empty while fans crowded into the cheap seats. The same phenomenon was apparent two weekends ago at Lowe's Motor Speedway -- plenty of empties in the pricey upper deck overlooking Turn 1, while the backstretch grandstand was much more populated. You'd think track promoters would pick up on this and realize that, while there's still quite a market for high-end tickets, there's even more of a market for seats that aren't expensive, and stand a better chance of being sold.

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In any sport, ticket prices are always going to be a point of contention between fans who think they're too high and event promoters who want to charge as much as they can. NASCAR is no different. And since sports is often one of the last segments of society to feel the effects of an economic downturn, don't expect prices to come down anytime soon. In fact, given that average NFL, Major League Baseball, NBA and NHL ticket prices have all gone up in the past year -- increases ranging from 3.6 percent in the NBA to 10.1 percent in baseball, according to Team Marketing Report -- NASCAR would be bucking the trend if its tracks were to suddenly slash ticket prices across the board.

Of course, if we continue to see empty seats at some of these overbuilt racetracks, then maybe that's a trend worth bucking.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.