A luxury box is an enclosed box at a sporting stadium. This may also be called a luxury suite, private box, or corporate box. The luxury box usually offers excellent viewing of sporting events, and as well tends to offer many other amenities not available to the average sports fan.
A luxury box is normally quite expensive. In smaller stadiums, the luxury box may be leased for around 10,000 US dollars (USD) per year. In larger stadiums, prices for the luxury box can jump to millions of dollars. Businesses often purchase a luxury box to woo clients or reward money-generating employees.
Some luxury boxes have more amenities than others. Stadiums may build several club suites and several executive suites that can be leased for different prices. The club suites may offer fewer suites, or forgo catering. The executive suites, conversely, tend to offer far more seats and more frills.
Huge amounts of revenue are generated from the sale or lease of either of these types of boxes. For example, the Brewer’s Stadium in Milwaukee charged a million USD to lease an executive suite in 2000. They quickly made millions of dollars on the sale of their executive and club suites.
A luxury box offers several amenities besides preferential seating. They usually come equipped with a full bar, and possible a bartender. They have private bathrooms, so that luxury box leasers do not have to wait in lines at regular public bathrooms. Usually catering is offered as well. Many luxury boxes can seat up to 30-40 people. They will also usually come equipped with several televisions, so the sporting event can be watched live, and minute shots can be watched more closely.
Sports fans that cannot afford a luxury box can be frequently annoyed that these large exclusive collection of seats make seeing a game difficult for other viewers. Some of the newer stadiums have attempted to rectify this situation by placing the luxury box on one side of the field only. This gives less wealthy fans a chance for the same view.
However, dyed in the wool sports fans often want seating on their home team’s “side.” Usually stadium seating is split in half, with those supporting the home team, or the visitors sitting on different sides of the stadium. Some avid fans can become quite annoyed if a luxury box prevents them from seeing the sporting event from the proper side of the stadium. Big stadiums argue that the prices charged for luxury boxes help keep ticket prices low for fans with lighter pocketbooks.