Companies are laying off people left and right. The Big Three want government loans. The banks and Wall Street received a bailout. If people don't have money for their mortgages, will they pony up for tickets to a ball game? Will Corporate America?

According to The Boston Globe, the average family of four would have spent $320.71 attending one Boston Red Sox game. Will the average family have that much money to spend this season? If not, why are most teams raising prices? Perhaps because their real "fans" are Corporate America and executives who attend games to woo their prospective clients? I don't have proof, but we do know that Corporate America buys a lot of ads and provides corporate sponsorships to our favorite sporting pastimes... or at least they use to.

Earlier this month Home Depot ended their popular project supporting Olympic athletes, thus reducing the chance that my 2x4 will be cut by a world champion curler (I love curling!):

In the 16 years that Home Depot has sponsored the U.S. and Puerto Rico Olympic and Paralympic teams, it has employed 600 athletes who have won 145 medals. Home Depot's sponsorship amounted to a $15 million to $20 million commitment over four years, said one person familiar with the matter.

The U.S. Bobsled team can afford to send only one sled to the European World Cup. Even footballers down under are threatened with a shortage of sponsors!

But wait, those aren't our marque sports. Baseball, basketball and football are immune right? Wrong:

"No one is immune," says NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy, whose league has seen a 1% dip in attendance this year, even though most of those tickets were purchased well in advance of the financial crisis. Think of how many empty seats that could mean by the fall of 2009. "We're concerned about next year's attendance," Mr. McCarthy says.

As a media-driven league, the NFL is less susceptible to a slump at the gate than most other sports. But other concerns include the drawn-out naming-rights sagas in New York and Dallas and the ability to charge premium prices for the post season games. The NFL is lowering prices 10% across the board for January 2009 playoff games and scaling back some Super Bowl tickets to US$500 a pop from US$800.

So scaling back to $500 a seat for the Super Bowl doesn't sound like a big hit, but that adds up. I doubt that this dip in sponsorships and ad sales will bring the NFL down like arena football, which had to cancel its season this year. But it is a sign that the economy is really suffering when GM opts out of the Super Bowl commercial bonanza.

Does this mean we might see Billy Mays during the Super Bowl or *gasp* even watch the Dallas Cowboys, America's Team, at Snuggie Stadium? Only time will tell...

[Image: Temple News]