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Notes -
In the case of sports I wonder if it's a case of some unarticulated feelings about how there is an unpriced social good being destroyed in the process of optimising for the aspects that can be priced?
Here in Ireland you get the same thing happening with Gaelic Athletic Association sporting matches, except the GAA explicitly articulates a focus these unpriced social goods, with an emphasis community (It's no surprise that one of its original motivations was the fostering of Irish nationalism). All players are amateurs who often work other jobs on the side (their celebrity status and endorsement deals make up the shortfall) and everyone else involved is a volunteer, tickets are priced well below market value so as to not exclude any devoted fans, and showing up to an all-Ireland final without knowing a thing about the game (and taking the place of a true fan) isn't something that will win you popularity. There was a big controversy a few years ago when Sky bought the exclusive rights to screen some games as it was thought to go against the inclusive spirit of the organisation.
I don't think the GAA is offering a different product than other sporting organisations, they're just unique in their recognition and protection of, let's say the wider role of sports in the nation, or in economic terms the positive externalities which it's hard to put a price on. I see English football fans complain about the damage the involvement of insane amounts of money has done to their game and I suspect that they're talking about the erosion of the type of thing that the GAA makes great efforts to protect.
I can see local sports teams having an unspoken (or spoken) social contract with their home cities, whereby subsidized/affordable tickets help ensure sufficient political goodwill that may pay dividends in the form of tax rebates for new stadiums etc. It's the same phenomenon with museums that are free to locals and paid for tourists.
But this calculus doesn't apply to musicians who tour the country/world rather than stick around to represent one city. It's hard for me to see pricing tickets below market helping anyone other than scalpers. Well, it also helps people who can't afford tickets, but I don't see the social good in having progressive pricing for luxury goods and services. If someone cannot afford to pay market pricing for a Taylor Swift concert, it's probably financially imprudent for them to pay for below-market pricing. You could argue society is better off when poor people are allowed to make independent decisions with their money, including shelling out for a concert ticket, but to argue society is better off implicitly encouraging them to do so by subsidizing luxury tickets goes too far.
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