A Luxury box is a special seating section located within stadium

Stadium

A modern stadium is a place or venue for outdoor sports, concerts, or other events and consists of a field or stage either partly or completely surrounded by a structure designed to allow spectators to stand or sit and view the event.)Pausanias noted that for about half a century the only event...

s, arenas and other sporting and entertainment venues. They are typically located in the midsection of a stadium grandstand, usually providing the best views of the event. Some have glass panels that can be opened, in order for the spectators to feel closer to and more immersed in the action of the event. The inside of a luxury box typically includes a bar, televisions, a small seating area, and a private bathroom. The boxes are usually catered, with guests enjoying corporate hospitality, with champagne, canapés, shrimp, and sushi being common favorites. The lease to a box usually comes with allocated parking spaces at the venue and access is usually provided with separate entrances, away from the general public gates.

Commercial aspects

Most luxury boxes are leased by contract on a yearly basis, though some are bought in a manner similar to that for a condominium

Condominium

A condominium, or condo, is the form of housing tenure and other real property where a specified part of a piece of real estate is individually owned while use of and access to common facilities in the piece such as hallways, heating system, elevators, exterior areas is executed under legal rights...

. These methods usually grant access to the box by the leaseholder or owner for every event held at the venue. A few stadiums rent

Renting

Renting is an agreement where a payment is made for the temporary use of a good, service or property owned by another. A gross lease is when the tenant pays a flat rental amount and the landlord pays for all property charges regularly incurred by the ownership from landowners...

 them on a per-event basis. Prices vary from US$5,000 up to the millions of dollars depending on the venue and events held there.

Luxury boxes are a significant source of revenue for most professional sports teams and stadium owners. Therefore, teams often want to build new stadiums so that they can have more luxury boxes. Many new additions to college football

College football

College football refers to American football played by teams of student athletes fielded by American universities, colleges, and military academies, or Canadian football played by teams of student athletes fielded by Canadian universities...

 stadiums in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 are built with luxury boxes, producing additional income for the schools.

Luxury boxes that are rented on a single event basis can range from US$250 for low-key events to up to at least US$250,000 for high-end events such as sporting final matches. Also, the location of the box and how many people the box can hold usually makes up the price. Standing room tickets may also be purchased at an additional fee but are usually less money than an actual suite ticket. If a normal box ticket with a seat costs US$500 per ticket then standing room tickets might be around US$250–US$300 per ticket. These tickets will allow more people in a box, but they won't have seats and will have to stand in the box or sit in the lounge area.

Effect on general seating

Some have commented that the rise of the luxury box, along with club seating, has degraded the game-day experience for the average fan, because placement of the boxes has moved the upper decks higher and farther away from the playing surface. Two venues, Ford Field

Ford Field

Ford Field is an indoor American football stadium located in Detroit, Michigan, USA, that is the current home field of the NFL's Detroit Lions. It is owned by the Detroit/Wayne County Stadium Authority. It regularly seats 65,000, though it is expandable up to 70,000 for football and 80,000 for...

 and Philips Arena

Philips Arena

Philips Arena is an indoor arena in Atlanta, Georgia.Completed in 1999 to replace The Omni, at a cost of $213.5 million, it is home to the Atlanta Hawks, of the National Basketball Association, and the Atlanta Dream, of the Women's National Basketball Association...

, have addressed these concerns by placing all luxury boxes on one side of the playing surface, which allows the other sides of the venue to have closer sightlines than most modern stadiums.

Prevalence

The stadium with the most luxury boxes is the Estadio Monumental "U" in Lima

Lima

Lima is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, Rímac and Lurín rivers, in the central part of the country, on a desert coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Together with the seaport of Callao, it forms a contiguous urban area known as the Lima...

, Peru

Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

 with 1,251. The first stadium to contain a luxury box was the Astrodome

Reliant Astrodome

Reliant Astrodome, also known as the Houston Astrodome or simply the Astrodome, is the world's first multi-purpose, domed sports stadium, located in Houston, Texas, USA. The stadium is part of the Reliant Park complex...

 in Houston, Texas, built in 1965. One unique set of luxury boxes is located on the campus of Boston College

Boston College

Boston College is a private Jesuit research university located in the village of Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA. The main campus is bisected by the border between the cities of Boston and Newton. It has 9,200 full-time undergraduates and 4,000 graduate students. Its name reflects its early...

. The school's main indoor arena, Conte Forum

Conte Forum

The Silvio O. Conte Forum, commonly known as Conte Forum, Kelley Rink , or simply Conte, is an 8,606-seat multi-purpose arena which opened in 1988 on the campus of Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts that lies within the Brighton neighborhood of Boston...

 (also known as Kelley Rink for hockey

Ice hockey

Ice hockey, often referred to as hockey, is a team sport played on ice, in which skaters use wooden or composite sticks to shoot a hard rubber puck into their opponent's net. The game is played between two teams of six players each. Five members of each team skate up and down the ice trying to take...

 games), is directly attached to its football

American football

American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...

 venue, Alumni Stadium

Alumni Stadium

Alumni Stadium is a football stadium located on the campus of Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, approximately sixmiles west of downtown Boston. The stadium lies within the city limits of Boston, although its postal address is Chestnut Hill. It is the home of the Boston College Eagles...

. Some of the luxury boxes in the combined complex overlook both the stadium's playing field and the arena floor.

Luxury boxes have become a feature of the major professional sports league system in North America.

Use in the NFL

Most notable in their use of luxury boxes is the National Football League

National Football League

The National Football League is the highest level of professional American football in the United States, and is considered the top professional American football league in the world. It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, with the league changing...

. Under the NFL's current revenue sharing agreement, teams must forfeit a large portion of their ticket revenues so that the funds can be redistributed among all the teams, particularly those in smaller markets. However, the luxury boxes, quickly becoming a top source of revenue for the franchises, were exempted from this sharing requirement. Because of this as well as the NFL's blackout rule, there has been a rush in recent years to sacrifice seating capacity

Seating capacity

Seating capacity refers to the number of people who can be seated in a specific space, both in terms of the physical space available, and in terms of limitations set by law. Seating capacity can be used in the description of anything ranging from an automobile that seats two to a stadium that seats...

 in favor of the luxury boxes, and teams have pressed state and local governments for financial assistance to either build new stadiums or renovate older venues. These new stadiums and renovations generally cost hundreds of millions of dollars; the two newest NFL stadiums, Cowboys Stadium and MetLife Stadium, each cost over $1 billion.

The luxury box conundrum is one of the reasons why Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, which has two older stadiums (the Rose Bowl

Rose Bowl (stadium)

The Rose Bowl is an outdoor athletic stadium in Pasadena, California, U.S., in Los Angeles County. The stadium is the site of the annual college football bowl game, the Rose Bowl, held on New Year's Day. In 1982, it became the home field of the UCLA Bruins college football team of the Pac-12...

 and the LA Coliseum

Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum is a large outdoor sports stadium in the University Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, at Exposition Park, that is home to the Pacific-12 Conference's University of Southern California Trojans football team...

) that both seat over 90,000 but contain no luxury boxes, still does not have an NFL franchise

History of the National Football League in Los Angeles

Professional American football, especially its established top level, the National Football League, has had a long history in Los Angeles, the center of the second-largest media market in the United States. Since 1995, Los Angeles has been by far the largest U.S. market without an NFL team...

 16 years after both the Rams

St. Louis Rams

The St. Louis Rams are a professional American football team based in St. Louis, Missouri. They are currently members of the West Division of the National Football Conference in the National Football League . The Rams have won three NFL Championships .The Rams began playing in 1936 in Cleveland,...

 and Raiders

Oakland Raiders

The Oakland Raiders are a professional American football team based in Oakland, California. They currently play in the Western Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League...

departed in 1995.