The sports ticket price enigma

We love inflation data. Not just the headline inflation rate, but also the line items. The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks thousands and thousands of items. Generally, things are getting more and more expensive because of the unusually high inflation the United States is currently experiencing.

But there's an inflation curveball. One line item on this past October's Consumer Price Index (CPI) appeared to be getting cheaper. Its official Bureau of Labor Statistics name is "Admission to sporting events."

Sports tickets were down 17.7 percent year over year. And have been down for months.

Which is odd, because attendance for lots of sports has been going up. With fears about the pandemic on the wane, sports fans have started coming back to stadiums in droves.

And although the BLS meticulously reports on the prices of consumer goods and services, they don't speculate on why items have the prices they do.

So, we took matters into our own hands. Kenny Malone and Robert Smith set out to hypothesize why ticket prices deflated. They visited as many sporting events in one day as possible to try to get to the bottom of this anomaly.

This episode was produced by Dave Blanchard and mastered by Andie Huether. It was edited by Keith Romer. Jess Jiang is Planet Money's acting executive producer.

Music: "Les Fanfarons," "End Zone," and "Crazy Jane."

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