Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes
- Utah Jazz and University of Utah are raising ticket prices, impacting affordability for fans.
- A poll reveals more than three-fourths of Utahns find attending live sports events expensive.
- Streaming services complicate sports viewing, with many finding it costly and fragmented.
SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Jazz are raising season ticket prices for the 2025-26 season. The University of Utah is doing the same for football ahead of its second season in the Big 12 Conference. Prices jumped at BYU when it joined the conference and fans last year paid more for football tickets than any time in the school's history.
Not everyone can afford season tickets, but many would like to attend a game or two.
The average cost of single-game tickets is hard to pin down in any sport but can come with a hefty price tag. How big depends on who the home team is playing, when you buy, date of the game and seat location, among other factors. You'll pay more to see storied franchises like the Boston Celtics or Boston Bruins, for example. The same goes for high-demand Real Salt Lake matches.
There's no question that the cost for taking in a live sporting event in Utah is going up, regardless of whether it's professional or college.
And that isn't lost on sports fans in the state.
A new Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll found slightly more than three-fourths of Utahns say it is expensive rather than affordable for the average person to attend a sporting event in-person in Utah. Only 12% see the cost as somewhat affordable, while even less than that, 3%, say going to a game in person is very affordable.
The online survey of 845 Utah adults was conducted May 16-21 by Harris X. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.
Broken down by income, 82% of survey participants making $50,000 to $99,000 a year say tickets to sporting events in the state are very or somewhat expensive, the highest response among income categories.
Younger people found sports tickets more affordable than older people, according to the poll.
The average price of a Utah Jazz ticket this past season was $218, according to Barry's Tickets, an online resale marketplace. But the get-in price is considerably lower than that, especially for games against teams that lack star power. So, if you don't mind sitting a little farther away from the action, there's probably something in your price range.
By comparison, the Los Angeles Lakers had the highest average ticket price at $702, while the Indiana Pacers had the lowest at $82, per Barry's.
Jazz season tickets for the 2025-26 season run $11,352 for a lower bowl, center court seat to $3,216 for the upper reaches of the Delta Center, per the team. Mammoth season tickets for the pasts season are comparable, at $10,920 for lower bowl, center ice seats to $3,024 in the upper bowl.
Smith Entertainment Group principal Ryan Smith acknowledged the high ticket prices for hockey games last year, saying the trend in sports is for player salaries and ticket prices to go up.
"We're trying everything we can on that front," he said.
The Mammoth had no trouble selling out of season tickets in its inaugural year, with demand, in fact, exceeding availability. Single-game tickets were expensive, but the team also offered more affordable options in the second half of the season, including limited-view $10 tickets for students and shoppers at Smith's grocery stores. Every ticket came with a hot dog and a bottle of water.
SEG, which owns the Mammoth, Jazz and Delta Center, also offered cheap food at the arena on what it called the "Mountain Menu" — hot dogs, ice cream, popcorn and nachos for $3 each and Dasani bottled water for $2 — among more costly arena concessions.
Utah also has a wealth of other pro and college sports for fans who just want to enjoy a game, including soccer, baseball, rugby and lacrosse — often at more affordable prices.
Salt Lake Bees tickets start at $13 for outfield berm but go up sharply from there to sit in the stands. Some club-level seats go for more than $150 and include food and drinks.
For those who don't attend games in person for whatever reason, there's always television and streaming — if you can find the service that meets your needs and interests.
Utahns are split when it comes to their thoughts about viewing live sports on a screen, according to the Deseret News/Hinckley poll.
The survey found 42% believe watching or streaming live sports is easy and accessible, while 39% said there are too many separate television and/or streaming platforms needed to watch live sports.
Poll participants ages 18 to 49 broke roughly the same as the participants as a whole. More than a quarter of those over 50 didn't know whether live sports were accessible or if there are too many platforms.
The proliferation of streaming services can make it difficult to find what you're looking for, especially when it comes to non-major sports. Those platforms have also raised prices, making it costly to subscribe to multiple services.
In 2023, SEG launched Jazz+ to stream Jazz games and followed that with Utah HC+ after the NHL team arrived last year.
The Motley Fool's State of Streaming survey earlier this year found that 62% of respondents said there are too many streaming options. That's up from 53% in 2022, per the financial services company.
Yahoo Finance reported last year that in addition to Fox, CBS and NBC, a football fan would have to subscribe to several streaming services to catch the entire NFL season.
"The NFL season is just one example of how fragmented the sports landscape has become as legacy media players and more recently tech giants compete for pricey media rights deals," Yahoo Finance reported. "The reason: Sports content is highly desired by media companies looking to gain access to massive audiences of loyal viewers."
