They say things are expensive in the Bay Area, but this is officially out of hand. The Golden State Warriors are now charging $100 for the privilege to not actually attend games. OK, technically you can watch the court with the team’s new “In the Building Pass”, but only from the television sets in the club areas at Oracle Arena. In the long line of Silicon Valley “innovations” that are just expensive variations on things that already exist, the Warriors have essentially reinvented the concept of “going to a sports bar”.

Here’s how the “offer” works: fans get the opportunity to pay $100 for the ability to get into the arena for every home game. That’s basically all they get. They do not get a seat and they don’t even get a chance to see the game in person. Instead they can watch the action unfold on the various televisions at Oracle and, if they want, enjoy some ridiculously priced food and drink at the various bars and restaurants within. Yes, those who have a (non-transferable) pass are eligible for promotional giveaways. No, the offer doesn’t extend to the postseason.

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This was reported by ESPN’s Darren Rovell, who predicted the deal would be a tremendous success: “Some people will rip the Warriors for selling a building pass with no access to the court. But a lot of people want to feel the energy from the crowd. At about $15 per game, they’ll sell out of the 200 passes they are offering.” For Rovell, who is less of a reporter and more of sport’s enthusiastic spokesperson for the malignant amorality of late stage capitalism, the only question involved is whether fans will pay for them or not (and he’s right, they probably will). Whether or not it’s right for the team to offer a deal that essentially boils down to “pay money to come inside and pay even more money,” is completely irrelevant to his calculations.

This is the kind of nonsense you can get away with when you’re amid what is about to be a 300-game sellout streak and have a season ticket waiting list of roughly 44,000 people. The Warriors have appeared in four straight NBA finals, have won three of them, and have put together the best regular season campaign in league history. When Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green and company are playing at their best, which they usually are, they are almost impossible to defeat. Teams like this don’t appear very often: you’d have to go back to Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls teams to find a comparable example in the NBA.

Seeing the Warriors this season in Oakland may literally be a “once in a lifetime” experience in one respect. As Bleacher Report’s Scott Polacek points out, the Warriors plan to move from Oracle Arena to Chase Center in the Mission Bay neighborhood of San Francisco next season. Theoretically, the offer gives fans in Oakland one last opportunity to celebrate their team before the move without them having to go through the more expensive process of securing Warriors tickets. What they are actually doing is bilking fans, many of whom stuck with the team back when they were one of the jokes of the league, one final time before skipping town forever.

It’s difficult to come up with any “deal” quite like this. Rovell brings up the Dallas Cowboys, no strangers to squeezing cash from their fanbase, who offer standing room only tickets called “Party Passes”. Of course, Party Pass holders actually get an opportunity to see the field, even if doing so involves a nightmarish process of pushing your way through swarms of other desperate Cowboy fans. Baseball fans who have visited, say, Chicago’s Wrigley Field or Boston’s Fenway Park know about the joys of attempting to follow the action from obstructed view seats. But “obstructed view,” as annoying as it can be, is miles better than “no view.”

So, it looks like that after giving themselves far too much credit for the success of their team, Warriors executives have come up with a true innovation in squeezing out one last revenue stream from their dedicated fanbase despite not technically being able to sell any more tickets. Considering the rapidly increasing cost of living in the Bay Area, it makes a certain amount of sense that this is the first place we’ve seen this particular absurdity. It’s understandable that the cost of going to a Warriors game would go up considering their tremendous success over the last few years, it’s just a little funny that the cost of not going to a Warriors game is suddenly a factor as well.

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Ideally, this move goes nowhere and merely finalizes the Warriors’ evolution from one of the NBA’s most enjoyable teams to one of its most hated entities. At least that’s the best-case scenario. There’s always the chance that after this initial controversy, the “In the Building Pass” idea takes off and we start seeing other teams attempting to pull off the same gambit. Here’s hoping that Warriors fans stay home and enjoy their team’s success from the comfort of their own homes.