Corporate suites can be freaking awesome. I’ve seen one Sounders and a couple of Mariners games courtesy of Microsoft. The spread varied based on the “package”, there was always good booze, and sometimes it would just be waitstaff from the high end food place.
But yes, private parking, special elevators, no crowds, is really sweet.
As great as a corporate seat is, I’ve had awesome in a different way experiences in good and not fantastic seats. The COO of a major computer manufacturer is a big baseball fan. I took him one year in the corporate suite. The next year he was visiting his son in Vancouver and asked if I could arrange a game. The corporate suite wasn’t available or didn’t have it that year. He didn’t care, just wanted to see the game. So, we had seats maybe 20 rows up above the Mariners dugout. He couldn’t have been happier, and we had an experience that was at least as good as the hoity toity suite.
The best private booth was at the Hong Kong Rugby 7’s circa 2005-2010. That whole event is a Caliglian dystopia, and it’s great to be in one of the corporate booths out of the direct craziness. I did all the arrangements for that for about 5 years for Microsoft and participated fully for each one.
Forget sporting events, I once saw a New Years eve Aerosmith concert from a corporate box at the Boston Garden. ThebBalcony felt like it was about 30 ft from the stage, and no spending 4 hours getting pummeled from all sides. Plus the unlimited food & booze.
The company I used to work for had a box at Madison Square Garden. It was primarily for executives and schmoozing clients, but now and then they’d toss some around to the hoi polloi employees.
I’d scoop those suckers up every chance I got. Knicks games were awesome there (and since we’re talking 20 years ago, they were actually worth watching), and even though I’m not a hockey guy, it was a still a lot of fun to go to a Rangers game when you’re getting all the free food and booze you want!
Have a friend whose housing developer FIL owns a luxury suite at Capital One Arena in DC. Free food (crab cakes, steamed shrimp, wings, beef sliders, etc.), free beer, wine, and booze, private restroom, and even a personal attendant who will run out and bring you anything else you can think of.
Saw Guns ‘N’ Roses and ELO from there. When you’re not there for a game, they’ll park you in the Wizards players’ private garage. Last time I was there I was parked next to someone’s custom Maybach. When you leave, the police move everyone else out of your way.
I was part of a corporate group that went to Superbowl in New Orleans in 1978, we had several suites at a major hotel, and a couple other arranged touristy things, and an after party meet and greet with some of the Cowboys [Broncos? who won?]. I showed up for about 25 minutes [introductory stuff through the kick off] and faded out and hung out in the hotel room reading and doing room service until I faded back in for the afterparty. Oddly, nobody seemed to miss me at all <snicker> I did tell my Dad [my boss, he was one of the senior VPs for the company] that I was fading out, which he was OK with, the appearance was more or less forced on me as an employee and he knew I pretty much disliked football. I will say I managed to polish off at least a pound of jumbo shrimp, a pair of lobster tails, a couple ears of corn and a hurricane before I slid out, a lovely fruit and cheese board and a pot of coffee with the fixings in the room, and <blech> champagne which I managed to get changed into a mimosa fairly quickly and assorted other random party foods on trays toted around by waitrons at the afterparty.
My dream skybox event would be Rammstein at Madison Square Garden … sigh they are fantastic live, but I didn’t manage to score handicapped access seats and all the jackasses in front of me refused to eitehr sit down or put the short people in front of me so I could see the stage. But the music rocked, and while stumping to the elevator I did manage to stand long enough to watch Engelas the encore. I absolutely ADORE the wings. I can’t imagine how amazing Rammstein, skybox, small setup bar and food would be =)
I was invited to see Cream play at Madison Square Garden (2005?) from a corporate box. I think the face value on the ticket was $250. All the food and drink you could want plus a direct view of the stage. A great time.
The place I was working was making a whole bunch of money for a while, and the guy had Dodger seats. First, really great ones one the first base side just out of arms reach for the on deck guy. They would come up on random weekdays when the AEs hadn’t placed them, and around a quarter to six I would get a shot. Want tickets? Oh yeah. Those were good seats. But then he bought a box in the dugout club. This is like underground Disneyland. Separate entrance, private club with bar, buffet, restaurant and a full barrel of Dodger peanuts. Seats right behind home plate. Got those once. Then the business changed.
Back in the 90s I had a chance to be in the owner’s box in the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit. It blew my mind. Similar to the OP’s description, it was basically a full apartment (it even had a bedroom!) with a glass wall overlooking the area and seats on the balcony. There were two tables filled with food. One was dozens of Little Cesar’s Pizzas (the owner of LC was the owner of the Red Wings) and the other table had all kinds of other foods. It was quite an experience.
Flying first class is better than flying coach. Flying private beats them both.
Delta class seats at Nationals stadium beats the bleachers but costs 30 to 100 times as much.
My old firm used to have a box at Madison square garden and Yankee stadium. We used to take the summer associates to events and when they started working for us, 99% of them never saw those seats again, except when the circus was in town, they could go watch the circus in MSG.
My company used to have a suite at Staples Center in Los Angeles and would “generously” raffle off tickets to us peons (after skimming the good stuff for the execs - there were plenty of WNBA and Clippers games available, but never any Lakers playoff tickets or hot concerts). I saw the circus and a Clippers game.
Loved the premium parking and private escalator up to the suite level. The suite interior with the food and couches was swanky, although the bar was locked up and idle since the company wouldn’t pay for booze. The actual seats on the balcony overlooking the floor… way, way, way too high up*. For the basketball game, watching on TV would have been better. For the circus, so high up that about 1/3 of the view was obstructed because we were looking down on the lighting rig and the support poles and guy wires.
So, great for partying and schmoozing, not so great for actually watching an event.
So high that in 2010 a toddler fell to his death from a suite on the same level. News reports said he fell 50 feet, and that is onto the back row of the second tier of seating.
I’ve been to Cubs games a couple times and they were not very nice. But this was before renovation so no doubt they are better now. Biggest thrill was that one of the guests was Seka! Just a pleasant middle aged woman at the time but really the only ‘famous’ person I ever was proximate to.
Two summers ago I was in the box seats for work at a Cubs game. I ate plenty, had a few beers, and mingled with the coworkers and vendors. It was getting late in the game and many of my coworkers were ducking out to head home, so I sat down and started paying more attention to the game. All of a sudden, this gal from the next set of seats walked right past me and I had a “Hey, what are you doing here?” moment but I didn’t say anything to her. She looked at me as she sat down in her own seat and said “You’re the only one in yours and there were people in the hallway, it was just easier to go though yours.”
Never before had I thought that I would ever be the last man standing in the club seats and this became an instant checked item in my nonexistent bucket list. I had a great laugh and chatted with the woman and her friends about it, grabbed another beer and tried to get one of my friends in the bleachers to come up (he couldn’t get through). The cleanup crew came in and one of the guys on it tried to give me more beer but I was at a point were “just one more” was still a little too much, so I just had the one. It ended up pouring late in the game so it got delayed to the next day.
Pricing depends on the market and the size of the suite (number of seats, bathroom in suite or not, etc.) If you are the suite licensee, then you normally get tickets for all events at the arena, stadium, etc. including multiple sports, concerts, etc.
I normal size box (20 tickets + 8 parking tickets) in an arena that includes NBA, NHL, and concert events, (all in about 120 events per year) will cost a company anywhere from $250,000 to $300,000 for the year. That ends up being about $115 per person per event. This does not include food. You have to order that separately, and this is where the arena owner will gouge you.
I used to enjoy them. The company my parents worked for would have regular drawings for their box seats at local sports events. The company pretty much ceased to exist years ago though, and while the boxes are still there (and I think the same company rents them?), almost everyone there was let go. Now I see those same box seats and sigh wistfully.