There was some­thing about be­ing at the Queen’s Park Oval dur­ing the re­cent CPL match­es that caught my at­ten­tion.

It wasn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly what was hap­pen­ing out in the mid­dle. It was what was hap­pen­ing around me.

Look across the stands and even the streets lead­ing to the Oval, and you saw all kinds of peo­ple. The diehard crick­et fol­low­ers were there. Young peo­ple were there for the lime. Fam­i­lies came out.

There were peo­ple dressed up in their TKR gear and ready for the cam­eras, oth­ers in a reg­u­lar shirt and jeans. Some prob­a­bly planned the night weeks in ad­vance, while oth­ers may have de­cid­ed that af­ter­noon that they were head­ing to the Oval.

And they still came out de­spite what had been a dis­ap­point­ing run of re­sults at home for the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR). That in it­self says some­thing.

For many peo­ple, sport is nev­er on­ly about the fi­nal re­sult. It is the op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet, greet, and re­con­nect with friends and en­joy what our sport­ing cul­ture has to of­fer.

The crick­et mat­ters, but so too does every­thing around it. The mu­sic. The food. The per­son­al­i­ties in the crowd, such as Sun­ny Bling. The chance to see Ral­phy run­ning across the field. The ban­ter be­tween overs, con­stant ac­tion around the stands, and the ever-present mix of at­trac­tive, well-dressed peo­ple that has long been part of the CPL scene. That feel­ing that for a few hours, a sport­ing venue be­comes one big meet­ing place.

That re­mains one of the great strengths of sport in the Caribbean, and it is some­thing we shouldn’t take for grant­ed. Yes, there were the pre­mi­um ar­eas too. The cor­po­rate crowd, the all-in­clu­sive sec­tions, and those will­ing to pay con­sid­er­ably more for a dif­fer­ent ex­pe­ri­ence.

But im­por­tant­ly, there was still space for every­body else. That mat­ters. Be­cause I won­der whether sport is slow­ly for­get­ting the very peo­ple who helped make it valu­able in the first place.

Tick­et prices keep climb­ing. Then there are stream­ing sub­scrip­tions, pre­mi­um pack­ages, hos­pi­tal­i­ty ex­pe­ri­ences, park­ing, food, and mer­chan­dise. Go­ing to a ma­jor sport­ing event is be­com­ing less of a sim­ple de­ci­sion and in­creas­ing­ly some­thing that has to be bud­get­ed for.

The CPL de­serves some cred­it in this re­gard

For some match­es at the Oval this sea­son, there was clear­ly a pre­mi­um prod­uct avail­able. The Red Stand Pre­mi­um All-In­clu­sive, for ex­am­ple, was list­ed at over US$200, while oth­er pre­mi­um op­tions al­so moved well be­yond US$100.

But you didn’t have to spend that kind of mon­ey to get in­side. For some match­es, the Knight Lawn was around US$33, Stollmey­er Low­er was around US$40, Stollmey­er Up­per was around US$45, Re­pub­lic Bank and BGTT Sco­tia Bank stood around US$45, and Carib Low­er was around US$50. Child tick­ets in sev­er­al seat­ed sec­tions were al­so of­fered at re­duced prices. There is an im­por­tant prin­ci­ple in that. Give peo­ple the choice.

If some­body wants the food, drinks, spe­cial seat­ing, and cor­po­rate ex­pe­ri­ence and is will­ing to pay US$200-plus for it, ab­solute­ly pro­vide it. Sport has to gen­er­ate rev­enue. Spon­sors need val­ue. Hos­pi­tal­i­ty is now a mas­sive part of the sport­ing busi­ness. But there al­so has to be some­where for the man who sim­ply wants to watch the match. Some­where for the moth­er bring­ing two chil­dren or the group of teenage friends who saved some mon­ey and wants to ex­pe­ri­ence the at­mos­phere. Some­where for the sup­port­er who doesn’t know any­body with ac­cess to a cor­po­rate box. Be­cause those peo­ple are not ex­tras. They are the at­mos­phere.

I thought about that while watch­ing the Oval. The mix of peo­ple is part of what gives CPL its per­son­al­i­ty. If even­tu­al­ly every­one in­side a sport­ing venue is there be­cause they can af­ford an ex­pen­sive hos­pi­tal­i­ty pack­age, some­thing im­por­tant is lost.

I’ve seen the oth­er end of the spec­trum through foot­ball and World Cups. And the dif­fer­ence in tick­et pric­ing over the years is re­mark­able.

At the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, an in­ter­na­tion­al sup­port­er could buy a Cat­e­go­ry 3 tick­et for the World Cup fi­nal for US$440. Group-stage tick­ets in the same cat­e­go­ry were US$90.Four years lat­er in Rus­sia, Cat­e­go­ry 3 tick­ets for the fi­nal were US$455. A Cat­e­go­ry 3 group-stage tick­et was US$105.

Qatar be­came more ex­pen­sive, but even there a Cat­e­go­ry 3 tick­et for the 2022 fi­nal was QAR2,200, rough­ly US$605. There was al­so a spe­cial Cat­e­go­ry 4 pro­gramme for Qatar res­i­dents un­der which the fi­nal could be at­tend­ed for con­sid­er­ably less.

Then came 2026. At the up­per end of the ini­tial pub­lished pric­ing, Cat­e­go­ry 1 tick­ets for or­di­nary group-stage match­es reached US$1000. Think about that for a mo­ment. A seat for cer­tain group-stage games in 2026 could cost more than the low­est in­ter­na­tion­al-pub­lic tick­et to the World Cup fi­nal in Brazil 2014, Rus­sia 2018, and even, mar­gin­al­ly, Qatar 2022.

Yes, they are dif­fer­ent tick­et cat­e­gories, and it isn’t a per­fect like-for-like com­par­i­son. But the di­rec­tion of trav­el is dif­fi­cult to ig­nore.

And that is where the big­ger ques­tion comes in. How ex­pen­sive can sport be­come be­fore the crowd it­self be­gins to change?

We talk con­stant­ly about grow­ing the game. We want big­ger tele­vi­sion au­di­ences, stronger spon­sor­ship, more com­mer­cial part­ners and in­creased rev­enues.

All of that is nec­es­sary. But growth can­not sim­ply mean find­ing the max­i­mum amount some­body is pre­pared to pay for a seat.

Some­times growth means the ten-year-old walk­ing in­to a sta­di­um for the first time.

It means the fa­ther who can af­ford to take three chil­dren in­stead of choos­ing which one gets to go.

It means young sup­port­ers sit­ting to­geth­er, mak­ing noise, singing, ar­gu­ing about play­ers, and even­tu­al­ly be­com­ing life­long fans.

It al­so means cre­at­ing an en­vi­ron­ment where peo­ple still want to come even when the home team isn’t win­ning.That may be one of the most telling things I took away from the Oval.

TKR did not give its sup­port­ers the home run of re­sults they would have want­ed, yet peo­ple still turned up. They came for the crick­et but al­so for each oth­er and for the ex­pe­ri­ence.

That is the part of sport that can­not be man­u­fac­tured in­side a cor­po­rate pack­age.

Cor­po­rate box­es have their place. Pre­mi­um ex­pe­ri­ences have their place. Rev­enue mat­ters. But the reg­u­lar sup­port­er is still the heart­beat.

Sport needs to be very care­ful that in the pur­suit of more mon­ey, it doesn’t even­tu­al­ly price that heart­beat out of the build­ing.

That ad­di­tion gives the CPL sec­tion a much more Caribbean feel and makes the ar­gu­ment less about cheap tick­ets and more about why ac­cess pro­tects sport­ing cul­ture.

Ed­i­tor’s note

Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Com­mu­ni­ca­tions. He was a FI­FA me­dia of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa and the 2013 FI­FA U-20 World Cup in Turkey. He has trav­eled to over 90 coun­tries dur­ing his jour­ney in sport. “Pro Look” is his week­ly col­umn on foot­ball, sport, cul­ture, and the hu­man side of the game. The views ex­pressed are sole­ly his and not a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of any or­ga­ni­za­tion. shaunfuentes@ya­hoo.com