Photo: U.S. Guardian
A single working mother could once take her child to a Yankees game for $40, but today that money would not even cover the online service fees. Sporting events have been stolen from poor and working class people and reserved only for the wealthy elite.
Capitalism has a way of rendering what was once accessible to, and tactile for the masses into distant memories that themselves become the only thing that can be possessed, which is not a bad thing until said memories become the only thing that can be possessed due to profound wealth and income iniquity. For myself, I remember a time when my single, working class mother and I could impulsively decide to go to a Yankees game or a Knicks game the same day they were being played. Moms would head to the Chemical Bank ATM, take out $40, and have the ability to purchase two decent seats along with refreshments for both of us to enjoy. Today, $40 would not even be enough to pay for the service charges that are tacked onto online ticket sales, which demonstrates the fact that attending sporting events are included in the growing list of things including, but not limited to, quality housing, healthcare, education, and access to healthy and nutritious foods that have been pillaged from poor and working class people as racial capitalism continues to solidify the obscene idea that only the bourgeois and elements of the petty bourgeois have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The use of sporting events by empires to appease, mollify, and distract the masses as well as act as a tool to demonstrate the superiority and exceptionalism of a given society is nothing new. For instance, in 1936 when the Olympic Games were hosted in Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler aimed to use the games as a massive propaganda tool to showcase the “superiority” of the Aryan race. To accentuate the propaganda tool, Hitler ordered over $30 Million in state spending to subsidize travel, build grand venues such as the Olympiastadion Berlin, and lower lodging and railway costs by as much as 50% - and even put measures in place to prevent price gouging and keep costs artificially low for tourists. By doing so, Hitler successfully engendered a pastiche of the so-called age of enlightenment, which provided a propaganda palette that portrayed a society of equal rights and liberal values which could not possibly carry out the litany of atrocities we now know took place during and after the 1936 Olympic Games. And centuries before the Third Reich, the Roman Empire instituted a similar praxis for its gladiatorial games by making them free for its citizens. The games were actually funded by the emperor and wealthy elites to provide “bread and circuses” as a form of propaganda to keep the masses happy and distracted from the empire’s decadence and perpetual imperialism.
You would think the U.S. empire, which is responsible for more murderous atrocities and profound subjugation of colonized and oppressed people, both globally and domestically, than Nazi Germany would apply a similar praxis…but this would be a myopic way of thinking. At a time when U.S. empire is contemporaneously exercising barbarous imperialism in nearly every corner of the world from Latin America and the Caribbean, to the Middle East, and Africa rather than use sporting events to distract the masses from its bellicose activities, it’s instead using sporting events to normalize them. This, in part, explains why the U.S. and its legion of corporate henchmen could give a damn about the fact that the vast majority of poor and working class people cannot attend sporting events that have been seized by the capitalist dictatorship.
I recently spoke with Black Alliance for Peace National Co-Coordinator Erica Caines who explained the dichotomy of the rhapsody and contradictions associated with the recently crowned National Basketball Association (NBA) World Champion New York Knicks. On the one hand, New Yorkers like her and myself are ecstatic about the fact that our team delivered a championship after a 53-year drought - many New Yorkers have been waiting for this for their entire lives. At the same time, the NBA playoffs, and particularly the games played in New York City’s Madison Square Garden, showcased how capitalism has firmly entrenched the notion that watching sporting events in person is a luxury only available and accessible to the elite. Ticket prices for some of the Knicks’s playoff games were selling as high as $102,880 for the twelfth row. To put this into perspective, the $40 Moms used to spend to take us to a Knicks game represents 0.0004 percent of the price for a higher end 2026 Knicks playoff game ticket. As Caines noted, the people longing the most for a Knicks championship were watching their historic playoff run outside in the streets.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup acts as yet another example of the scandalous grift that attending sporting events has become. By some estimates, to attend the U.S. soccer team’s next match in Seattle, Washington, total costs, including travel, but not accommodations, are nearly $,2,000 for a nose bleed seat. Prices skyrocket for World Cup matches taking place in New York/New Jersey with seats costing as high as $10,990, which does not include the cost of taking a train from New York City to Met Life Stadium (located in New Jersey), which are going for $98. New York City Mayor, Zohran Mamdani, recently discussed the issue of exorbitant prices to both the Knicks playoff games and the World Cup, the latter of which he assisted some New Yorkers with attending by instituting a raffle for a limited number of tickets that also provided free travel to and from the city. While Mamdani’s concerns and benevolence for a choice few New Yorkers is somewhat laudable, we must also take note of the contradictions he’s normalizing as well as the contradiction that while one of the most vile human beings in human history, Adolf Hitler, subsidized games and instituted interdiction for ticket price gouging, a socialist mayor did and has not.
And speaking of socialism, what makes the inaccessibility to the World Cup, and many other sporting events, for the masses even more sadistic is the fact that the games in the US are being played in stadiums heavily subsidized by public funding. According to one study, the amount of public money [to build sports stadiums]has risen, from a median of $168 million in public funds per stadium in the 1990s, to $350 million in the 2010s, to $500 million in the 2020s across the four major U.S. sports leagues [NBA. NFL, MLB, and NHL].” All said, that public dollars are utilized to accommodate the construction of stadiums where World Cup matches are being held yet they are not accessible to the majority of the public is further proof that we exist in a society that provides socialism for the wealthy and capitalism for the poor and working class masses. Worse yet, be it the NBA playoffs or the World Cup, we are witnessing not just the normalization of monopoly capitalism, but the imperialism necessary to maintain it. And this normalization also includes the oppression and subjugation of colonized and oppressed people domestically who are under perpetual threat of slaughter and brutality by militarized forces like ICE and local law enforcement agencies exercising and maintaining domestic colonialism as FIFA exploits the labor of the very people who cannot afford to attend World Cup matches, while not being afforded self determination and the ability to walk the streets of their cities in safety.
This is why the work of the Anti Fascist Football Coalition (AFFC) is more salient than ever. It’s important for the masses to understand, as Caines named, that their boycott of the World Cup is not just about boycotting the games, but also about raising consciousness and awareness about what the games are normalizing and attempting to perambulate in an effort to obfuscate, distract, and confuse the masses through its well funded and well oiled sportswashing project. To this end, the work and larger initiative of the AFFC must and will continue long after the World Cup matches conclude. Continuing this work is up to us, the global majority of poor and working class people, the oppressed and the colonized. We must collectively send the message that socialism is only appropriate for those of the bourgeois willing to commit class suicide in service to the masses and the proletariat dictatorship - this is a very diplomatic and compassionate approach, at a time when the world has just witnessed its first trillionaire, when the alternative could, and perhaps should be the guillotine.
The veil has been lifted, the choice to see what has been revealed and act accordingly is entirely in our hands.
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright is an international climate and environmental liberation advocate, a racial justice practitioner, and a writer and policy expert residing in the United States with his family and their mischievous cat, “Evil” Ernie. He is a proud and active member of the Black Alliance for Peace and the Movement for Black Lives. His radio program, “Full Spectrum with Anthony Rogers-Wright,” airs on the Mighty WPFW network every Tuesday at 6:00 PM EST.
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