Professional sports: Fun for the whole family, assuming the family is rich or just watching from home.

The surge in ticket prices for live sports has made it costlier for fans to go to games in recent years, and especially costly for fans with families. From 1999 to 2020, the price of tickets to sporting events has grown more than twice as fast as overall consumer prices, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2023, the price for a family of four to go to a Major League Baseball game, buy food, a couple of souvenirs, and secure a parking spot went up to $266, not counting any travel costs to the game. For the National Football League, that jump brought the cost to $631. The National Hockey League and the National Basketball Association cost around $376.