Friday Update 08/13/2026

I just saw that Bob Iger and Joshua Kushner are buying the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) Los Angeles Lakers for $12.5 billion. That’s 25% more than current owner Mark Walter paid for the team less than one year ago.

Imagine if we could all make investments that earned 25% in a year’s time.

As the sale price of professional sports teams continues to rise, the effect on fans is that it makes attending games less affordable than ever before. That is only going to get worse.

When I was in high school in 1974, my friends and I often went to Philadelphia 76ers games. We could buy tickets for as low as $5, or about $35 in 2026 dollars. But today, the lowest-priced tickets for a 76ers game are $49 each, depending on the team they are playing. That’s because single-game tickets are sold only on the secondary market and prices vary according to the opponent. Add in $30 for parking, and going to a 76ers game with your partner or a date costs a minimum of $150.

Baseball is no different. In the 1970s, when the Phillies played at Veterans Stadium, we could get into the game for as little as $2.50 each. That’s about $17 in today’s money. Sure, we’d have to sit in the last seven or eight rows of the stadium, but we could afford to go to the games.

Now, a similar ticket to Monday night’s game is $42 each. In the mid-1970s, my friends and I would go to two or three games a week. I don’t see how high school kids can afford to go to more than three or four games per season, if that.

To make it worse, we now need to subscribe to multiple streaming services to watch games on television. Most Phillies games are available only on the local NBC Sports channel that is not broadcast over the air. Several games are only on Apple TV. Last night’s Field of Dreams game is only available on Netflix.

It seems that nearly every part of our society is being divided by income level, and sports is no exception. The leagues and teams no longer care about ordinary people. All they care about is maximizing their revenue this year.

I have been a sports fan since 1964. I am caring less about it every day. The sports business no longer cares about me, so why should I care about sports?

Here are some things I’ve seen in the news over the past few days that you might want to read and think about.

• The loss of gravity. According to the loons and conspiracy theorists, we were supposed to lose gravity for seven seconds on Wednesday. It didn’t happen. What a surprise! Read more about it here.

• Amazing photo: The Lion Nebula. The James Webb Space Telescope captured an amazing photo of the Lion Nebula, a dying star in the constellation Gemini about 5,000 light years away. Read more here.

I finished Dead Girl Blues by Lawrence Block. If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to get away with murder, this is a good book for you. It’s about a man in his early 20s who kills a woman, goes on the run, and assumes a new identity. He settles in Ohio and lives what most would consider an exemplary life until the advent of 23andMe and other genetic testing threatens to reveal his past. A good book that is highly recommended.

Dead Girl Blues was the first book by Block that I’ve read. I enjoyed it so much that I went to the library and checked out his The Sins of the Fathers, the first book in Block’s Matthew Scudder series. I read that one in two days and discovered that I enjoy reading crime fiction.

I have not watched much at all over the past week. I am looking forward to a five-part documentary series on PBS titled Bucks County, USA. I live in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and am interested to see this documentary about how politics has divided the place I live. Here’s the trailer:

That’s it for this week. Look for my regular Living After 60 column next Tuesday, and another Friday Update next weekend. Thanks for reading.