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Why staying at home-plate may be a better idea

By Ed Goldman

I had a company as a client for several years that bought a suite every year at my town’s NBA stadium. The client invited its own clients to enjoy the games in the air-conditioned, lavishly catered, bar-hosted, cushy-chaired den, where they could watch the hapless team lose game after game in splendid comfort, either through the treble-paned panoramic window high above the court or on one of the flat-screen TVs hung throughout. 

But there was a problem. My client’s clients, as well as a couple of its own execs also in attendance, mistakenly believed they were at the Playboy Mansion in the 1960s, that fabled bastion of lucky bastards, luscious bunnies, limitless booze and laid-out salvers of cocaine. At my local venue, there were neither bunnies nor coke. Nevertheless, suite attendees occasionally acted out the fantasy that normal rules of decency didn’t apply to their own behavior. Complications, in the form of post-game DUIs and threatened sexual harrassment lawsuits ensued.

Enter me, who was the company’s PR/marketing consultant. I was asked to produce a company video on “stadium executive-suite etiquette.” Me. A guy who had only sat in suites like this when he was reporting on a game. Yes, me. My first journalism award was for a sports story about running the 660-yard dash in high school. Then I wrote one about climbing the 20-foot rope in the gymnastics room. After those efforts I occasionally (read: rarely) would fill in for an actual sports writer on an emergency basis—like if his wife was giving birth or he was at home nursing a hangover that made his head feel as though it wouldn’t be out of place as an Easter Island statue or a Macys Parade balloon.

The video featured a lot of talking HR heads. It wasn’t my finest hour as a documentary director but once I found out the only reason I’d been asked to do it was to help the client arrange for legal settlements—the video was a sort of plan of corrections—I wasn’t too upset by the product’s lack of artistry. The sound quality was pretty good but that hadn’t been my job, only my responsibility.

What brought all this to mind are recent news stories about sports suites, and how they’re growing in popularity, particularly among minor-league teams. 

One article mentioned how groups of friends get together and chip in on sports-venue suite rentals, which can range from $600 to $20,000, depending on the Gold Book price of the car you were seen parking at a game. If you were seen emerging from a limo—and were the only one in it besides the chauffeur, meaning you and your buds didn’t chip in on a designated driver—the cost could easily compete with the annual budget of a Third World nation.

The odd thing about all of this to me is that even though I’m only a sports fan once a year—during play-offs and other championship games, by which time the wheat teams have been separated from the chaff teams—I tend to think that the fun of watching a sports event is to be at the venue itself, not in a room watching a video feed of something happening far, far below.

On the other hand, this is also why I never renewed my season tickets to watch the Sacramento Kings get pummeled by visiting teams whose members sometimes looked like they wouldn’t survive even the walk out of the locker room.