Toronto Sports for Everyone?

This is my first attempt and sharing my feelings so I thought I would start with something that has been grating on my nerves for quite some time.

Since when did sports become something only the upper class could afford? Instead of passionate hockey fans filling our stands, cheering on the team, we have men in suits barely paying attention to the action in front of them. Why does this happen? Simple, the price of a single ticket is simply too much for the every day person to spend. Even tickets for the Toronto Rock have gotten to be fairly expensive and lacrosse is suppose to be the working man's sport. This doesn't even make business sense to me. Sure, they will likely spend a lot of money on alcohol, but they are not the ones that will be buying souvenir after souvenir. They will not go home and immediately want to buy a jersey of their favourite player.

And now we get to baseball. I was excited when Rogers bought the Skydome. I knew it would mean losing the name Skydome and becoming just another corporate stadium, but I was looking forward to all the things Uncle Teddy could do with it.

There were some exciting new features added last year. The field turf was a huge improvement and it paved the way for us to get our newest slugger, but the video boards in the outfield wall have proved to be nothing but a danger to the outfielders. Until this past week they didn't even have the same information on the screens so depending on where you were sitting in the dome you could only see half the out of town scores. The ribbon boards are nice, but they have taken the information away from above home plate (where most of the action is taking place and your eyes would most easily find the information you desire).

My biggest beef is with the new VIP section they added this past off season. I was excited about it at first. It looked like it was going to be a comfy area where my husband could enjoy himself at the game with me. Instead I find out that you can only buy seats up there for the entire season, despite them having a per game cost in their pocket schedules. So, once again, the excutive has the advantage of the best seats for a game. I managed to get my company seats to a game once this year and I couldn't believe it when the couple in front of me were doing work for half the game! They watched about two innings and then left early. This is the part of the stadium that is shown on TV a lot too. Would you not want to portray the image of having a crowd just a great as any of the big guns?

On top of this, they haven't made the stadium any more comfortable for those of us who are in the lower classes. If you can believe it, they do not have hot water in the washrooms on the 100 level. Overlooking the fact that it can be pretty darn cold at the beginning and the end of the season, that is just plain unsanitary!

Now the kicker...
This past week I have heard that Uncle Teddy just isn't happy with having the increases revenue coming in from these special season tickets only seats. His plan for the future is to only show one Jays game a week on the regular cable channels. If you want to watch all of them you will have to buy a special package. This is absolutely ridiculous! I can understand not showing any home games so that you can try and boost attendance at the park, but not showing road games is, in my opinion, just plain ignorant! I am one of those suckers who will pay the extra (I actually already have the package so I can see more than just the Jays), but the Jays are just becoming fashionable again and this is not the way to return baseball in Toronto to those glory days we had in the early 90s.