You can say that going to a Major League Baseball game can sometimes be boring. But you’ll no longer leave unsatisfied. That is if you buy tickets to see the St. Louis Cardinals in sections 271 and 272, left field seats in what’s called Big Mac Land. There, this summer, for the first time you can purchase Coca Cola Unlimited tickets, which start at the bargain price of $29. For that price of admission, in addition to an afternoon of professional baseball, you also get your unlimited fill of the following: soda, hot dogs, chicken tenders, bratwurst, nachos, fries, popcorn, peanuts, chips, and ice cream. There are some caveats, like you can only get three things at a time, and they cut people off in the 8th inning. But otherwise, you can pretty much stuff your face all game long, or as long as your gastrointestinal track can take it.
This is by no means the first all-you-can-eat seating section in professional sports, which in more contemporary circles is often referred to as all-you-care-to-eat. The first foray into endless consumption came in 2007 in Dodgers Stadium, where upper deck seats came with Dodger dogs and the like. Since then, over half of MLB squads have given endless consumption a shot, including now the Cardinals. A handful of NBA, NHL, and even one NFL teams has joined in, but gluttony still remains largely for the boys of summer. There’s some obvious reasons for that disparity. Most notably, baseball teams host 81 home games a year, a whole bunch played after teams have been eliminated from even the most distant of post season aspirations. Which means that a) there’s a lot of seats to fill, and b) hardly any one game matters that much. So you kind of have to give some incentives to sell inventory. And what better way that by letting someone eat enough not-legally-allowed to be called cheese and nachos that they might need an angioplasty before they leave the ballpark.
Beyond any all-you-can-eat gimmick, food is an ever increasingly important part of the stadium experience. From Pat LaFrieda steak and lobster sandwiches at Citi Field to crème brulee at Fenway Park to more outrageous fare like a cotton candy burrito at State Farm Stadium in Arizona, sometimes you head out to the stadium for dinner and a game breaks out. In some case, like the U.S. Open Tennis Championships, you can eat your way through a high end food court and just watch matches on the big screen in the courtyard. Now unlike the Cardinal’s new stuff your face for one price, these boutique foodie experiences bring a significant price tag. That surf and turf at Citi Field runs north of $40, and you’re still probably going to spill half of it on your lap when you sit down. Of course, this whole concept of all you can eat dining at pro sports have been around for quite some time – only we just called it luxury boxes, and it was only for people who had friends whose parents were executives at big companies that liked to buy sports boxes as tax write-offs. So now, the Cardinals have just brought that once unattainable sense of endless bounty to the masses. Who says populism isn’t working?
I’m not going to try and make some overarching social comment about what the Cardinals giving fans all the bratwurst they could ever want might mean, or whether there’s some grand philosophical or sociological backbone. I’m guessing the Cardinals are just trying to fill some seats and incentivize folks with the cheapest food otherwise considered human grade. To be clear, there are maybe four things on that list I’d feel safe eating without a priest nearby.
St. Louis is in what sports fans might call an endless process of rebuilding, so the only thing not likely to bring fans to the park is quality baseball. But I will say this. A lot of times when you head to a sporting event, even before you get there, you feel like you’ve just been robbed. And if don’t know that feeling, give the Olympics a shot. So maybe just once, it will feel nice to know that at the end of the day, you can win the price war. You can get your full money’s worth from those greedy sports owners. All it’s going to cost you is $29 and a vat of Tums. But at the very least, you won’t leave unsatisfied.
Keith Strudler is the Dean of the College of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him at @KeithStrudler.
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