Those who have been following the ashes thread will know I'm a bit of a cricket fan. Well, as it turns out, I have Tuesday off and England and Australia are playing a 20-20 game at Old Trafford, which is quite near to me. I thought 'why don't I go and watch a bit of cricket then?'
For those that don't know 20-20 cricket is a much shortened form of the game - limited to 20 overs each side so the game takes maybe 2-3 hours to do all in. Assuming it doesn't get rained off like the one on Sunday did.

I've just been to the relevant web site. The cheapest tickets are £40. Forty Quid. For what at most will be three hours of entertainment and could possibly be much less. The last test match I attended, which was only two years ago, tickets for a whole day's play - say 9 hours play weather permitting - were 28 quid.

This is just the latest case. In the last couple of years I've seen prices for almost all forms of live entertainment skyrocket. Gigs seem to be running at over 50 quid if it's a 'name'. Sports events are getting to the same levels, theatre events, the whole lot. I'm pretty sure the average price has something like doubled in the last 10 years or so. That's well well above anything approaching reasonable. On top of that you usually get charged a fiver 'booking fee' even if you buy the tickets at the box office of the venue itself.

Sod 'em all, basically. I can't say I'm going to opt in to being ripped off.

Jon

I often look at ticket prices in the sense of 'That's the sort of money I could put towards a holiday!'

Now, I've no intention of actually going on holiday, but it's still a good way of looking at it

We pay less that £30 for 20-20 at the Oval (although they are members prices)