The sports industry has spent the better part of the previous decade proving it can maximize revenue inside the venue: Premium seating, dynamic pricing, all-inclusive hospitality and a booming secondary market have all pushed per-cap spending and franchise valuations to record levels. From a business standpoint, the strategy has worked exactly as intended. But there’s another side to that equation, and everyday fans are feeling the effects in a very direct way.

A clear pattern emerges from a custom YouGov Sport survey conducted Jan. 20–23 among a nationally representative sample of 1,000 U.S. sports fans. Most people feel that going to a live professional sporting event is financially out of reach; specifically, 67% of fans say that it’s somewhat (26%) or very (41%) unaffordable for them to attend games today. At the opposite end of the spectrum, only 13% of fans say that attending games feels affordable at any level.

That sense of live sports slipping out of reach for everyday fans is tied to what they believe has happened to attendance prices in a relatively short period of time. Two in three fans say the cost of attending live sports has increased compared to just three to five years ago, with nearly half (44%) saying it’s become “much more expensive,” Suffice to say, this is a change that fans are........

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