Charging for Parking at Regionals.

[RobotsVsKittens]

Originally Posted by N7UJJ

The multi million dollar basketball player, football player, singer, entertainer, etc. does NOT pay parking where they perform. Our teams are the performers that draw the crowd that pays for parking. It kind of bugs me that we are not offered the same courtesy.

It is not practical to give some people a free pass for parking at FIRST event, and I think it would be impossible to do fairly.

Most importantly almost everyone who is there is some kind of supporter of FIRST. Let's be honest, FIRST audiences aren't really general audiences. I am sure they are overwhelmingly comprised of someone who knows someone on a team.

Who would get free parking? The students themselves? Volunteers at the event? What about parents who bring their students? What about students whose parents/family/mentors bring more than one car? What about someone volunteering at another event and attending another to see how it is run, maybe improve the other, or just to have fun.

Also millionaire performers are producing millions for the event. As much as you might be gouged by parking costs, it's not to the tune of millions of dollars for all attendees across the entire FIRST event.

If some people have to pay for parking and others do not at a FIRST event, imagine what kind of message that sends. They would be treated like just any random person going to a football game or a concert - their price to go to an event is purely an entertainment cost. I'm sure if you asked most of the people in the stands how to categorize their parking fee, it would not be purely entertainment. These people are supporting you in a very real way; not in the impersonal mass-produced way people "support" celebrities at large venues.

This is not to say the people in the stands are not having as much fun as anonymous concert-goers, they probably care about it more since they know you; but I think it is foolish to take for granted the very real relationship everyone performing at a FIRST event has with the audience and compare it to the mostly meaningless relationship someone has with a celebrity they're paying to watch perform.