Let them eat wings somewhere else. The Masters and masses part ways.

Sports events, including venues, which give them homes, were once designed to the public. Now they are rapidly retreating to provide greater luxury and uniqueness – an understandable effort to maximize the profit, but still with an affiliated cost.

Outside the Augusta Center on the famous golf tournament in Georgia city, The Masters, recently, consider unrelated, news items.

Last week, the Sports Business Journal expanded the 2026 “official Masters Hospitality” program. This included resolutions for housing, transport, catering and so on corporate and/or well heel. Consider the “Full Scale, Private Home Program”, which will provide you $ 219,600 for the week.

The news came a few days after the announcement that a local hooter restaurant, a few walks from the Augusta National Golf Club, is closing.

At the national level, the chain is known for its wings, uh, for other things. The Augusta Hooter, however, had a lot of Masters Week Institution, which was a place for Harman to rest after a day in the tournament.

It spoke to Augusta, The Club and Augusta, the dualism of the city. The most exclusive country in the former country is the club, which is located on a formal and ancient ground. The latter is a snapshot of strip-mall, middle-American consumerism, especially from Interstate 20 to Magnolia Lane on Washington Road. Traffic lights and turn lanes, taco bails and tire shops.

Maybe anything humorously defined that contrast, as the hooter, which capitalizes in its location by installing a huge tent to handle overflow crowds. It hosted a “Miss Green Jacket” competition and clinging to the slogan of the series – “So far unrefined” – which is opposed to prime and proper Country Club.

Hooters were the most famous, in recent years, John Daily parked his RV out, allowing fans to smoke, cigarette smoking, and buy merchants from the last folk hero of golf. The party, uncertainly, often loud and late angry. Daelly once told me that his presence was also written in the restaurant lease – “I am fine until they are mad at the girls’ ass, I am fine,” he joked.

No, the experience does not call to be played as footage of rye’s creek for piano keys, but for many people, if you do, a tradition unlike another.

Now the hooter is closed, and while dalley has no doubt that a new perch will be found, some masters has gone from the weekly experience that has gradually, but incredibly, changed through years.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Augusta National has spent hundreds of million dollars using limited liabilities to buy property outside its original footprint. This is an effort not only to expand but also to control.

The city roads have now been rebuilt. A small public park is now privately owned by Augusta. Most especially, the club essentially bought an entire neighborhood, bulldozar it and turned it into a grass parking for the guardian.

The club also owns the shopping plaza which was Hooter’s home. No, Augusta National did not close the chicken-wing joint. Hooter, chain, struggling everywhere. In Augusta, it is just discovered that business was not quite good for other 51 weeks of the year.

Of course, a adjacent neighborhood filled with potential customers probably did not help.

The club is famously secret, but it would not surprise anyone if the final goal was a special ramp from the highway to the club, which was in line with club-controlled housing and hospitality, completely bypassing Washington Road.

This is a trend where stadiums have rapidly manufactured not only luxury boxes but also many special clubs – courtside to the back of the house plate.

The game is a business, so it is not to condemn someone from fulfilling demand. Organizations are just cashing on the phenomenon of “next door”, which already want something more special than a particular.

Nevertheless, for better or worse, the event replaces the dynamic of not only the site, but also the area around the site. If you have an all-u-can-e and drink spread, there is no need to pop in the old bar or family-owned pizza shop from the stadium. It separates fans and cuts into shared experience.

Even television broadcasting from baseball and basketball games can look different, with prime seats with swaths. Instead of watching action live, ticket holders are back to drinking a private lounge. It can cut the atmosphere.

Any change in the masters is notable as the incident has long opposed the deer. Bacions remain cheap. Parking is free. Cellphones are prohibited. There is no choice of access or favorite seating inside, give advertisement or video boards alone.

Masters are like stepping back on time – hold a Pento Paneer Sandwich ($ 1.50) and a beer ($ 6) and sit on the folding chair you brought. It is incredible. Bucket List Stuff.

In 2012, however, Augusta National opened a 90,000 -square -foot hospitality center Berkman Place with five restaurants. The corporate mob punched. Suddenly there was something else. Not every fan was the same.

Then in 2024, in an attempt to cut pre -and later round experiences, once left for local restaurants and businesses, Agusta National unveiled a large -scale hospitality center outside the Map and Flag, Gates.

This feature provides valet parking, food and drinks and, according to the promotional material, a “premium preservative experience … only with the level of service found in the masters.” The cost of a weekly badge is $ 17,000, the report of the Sports Business Journal.

Augusta National is only fulfilling demand, therefore, again, all this is the right game. And the club performs a lot of philanthropic functions in and around the city.

Nevertheless, with all these developments, when more and more luxury at one end is luxury-with more fans with peeling for in-house venue, there are less and less customers for local spots that are not owned by an outfit organization.

It may be that the beer down with John Daily in Hooter Parking is “not just the level of service found in the masters.”

Then, perhaps it was better.