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MONEY MAGAZINE / ICR POLL: High costs keeping Americans home

In survey, Americans cite cost as barrier to going to baseball games and to movies.

NEW YORK, NY [June 22, 2006] The high cost of entertainment may be keeping American families at home, according to the survey released Thursday by ICR and MONEY Magazine.

Nearly three in 10 Americans (29 percent) feel the cost of a major league baseball game is a barrier to heading to a ballpark, the survey showed. The average cost to attend a game is $40 per person and $150 for a family of four.

The majority of those surveyed (54 percent) said they do not attend major league games.

The survey also found that people are much less likely to go to the movies, with the majority (64 percent) of respondents saying they rent videos or DVDs to watch at home more often. Less than 1 in 5 (18 percent) go to the movies.

The typical cost of a movie ticket is $10 with a soda costing as much as $5. Among those who do watch movies, either at the theater or rentals at home, more (59 percent) feel these costs make them less likely to go to the movie theater.

Further, 58% of American parents who reported giving their children an allowance do not require their children to pay for things such as movies, meals with friends or non-essential clothes. More Americans with children under age 18 in their household (62%) do not currently give their child an allowance. More than one-third does (36%).

 

About The Poll

The Money/ICR poll was conducted by telephone with a nationally representative sample of 1,022 Americans from May 10th-14th, 2006. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.07 percentage points. The data on households with children was drawn from a sample of 320 households with children under age 18 living in the household. The margin of error is plus or minus 5.48 percentage points.

The poll was conducted using ICRs telephone omnibus survey of adults age 18 and over. ICR is one of the nation's leading market and opinion research firms and is headquartered in Media, PA. For more information on this methodology please go to: http://www.icrsurvey.com.

MONEY, published by Time Inc., is the nations largest financial publication with a circulation of 1.9 million and a total readership over 7 million. 

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