Cheapest sourced stadium food — NFL & MLS

How the basket is built

Three rules decide whether a venue makes the table. A hot dog and a beer each need a published single-item price — a board photo, a concessionaire page, a value-menu release, or a named price index that documents its own method. The price has to be for one item, so two-for-one deals, combo meals, kids-meal inclusions and “pair total divided by two” figures are stored on the venue page but kept out of the basket. And nothing is estimated: if a stadium publishes a hot dog but not a beer, it appears on the beer index and drops out here.

The pair matters because it is stable. A hot dog and a domestic beer are the two items US price trackers have quoted for a decade, they exist at every concession stand in both leagues, and neither depends on a stadium's chef-driven signature dish. A basket of “the most interesting item on the board” would rank stadiums by marketing budget; a basket of the two most ordinary items ranks them by what a fan actually pays to eat and drink.

What the sample covers

36 venues carry a published menu on this site. 12 of them have both a comparable hot dog and a comparable beer, which is the only reason the table below is short: coverage is limited by disclosure, not by how many stadiums exist.

Every figure carries the season it was published in. 22 of the 24 prices behind this table date from 2026 and 2 from 2025 — the comparable-only rule removes most of the older index figures, because a “pair total divided by two” estimate does not survive it. Where a venue has published a 2026 board we use it; where it has not, the row says 2025 and you can see that at a glance.

Why the two leagues are never averaged together

A single national average across NFL and MLS would be a number that describes no stadium. The two leagues differ on four things that all push price in the same direction: home dates (eight or nine NFL home games against seventeen or more in MLS, so a soccer club spreads fixed concession costs over twice the inventory), capacity (NFL buildings average roughly three times an MLS ground, which changes both rent and the operator's margin target), the operator (most NFL concessions run through national contractors with league-wide pricing, while several MLS clubs run their own programme), and sample size — 7 rows against 5, where one venue moving can shift an average by more than a dollar.

Ranking within a league is a fair comparison because the business model is the same. Ranking across them is a category error dressed up as a statistic. If you want the cross-league question answered, the honest version is a city-level one — the same metro with an NFL and an MLS venue — and that is a page we are building from the same data.

What this ranking does not tell you

• Pour size. Prices are per item, not per ounce. A 12 oz draft and a 16 oz draft are not the same purchase, and a few rows — value-menu beer, a canned beer, a premium draft — are labelled in the row precisely so you can see the difference.
• Brand tier. A $6 domestic value pour and a $14 craft pour both count as “a beer”. The row label names which one the source described.
• Time of purchase. Value menus that run for a fixed window, pregame-only pricing and season-member discounts are recorded on the venue page but excluded from the basket, because they are not the walk-up price.
• Tax and tip. Every figure is the posted menu price before sales tax and before any card or service fee, which is how the sources publish them.
• This season's board. A 2025 figure is a 2025 figure. Where a venue has published a 2026 board we use it, and where it has not we say so on the row.

Checking a price yourself

Every row links to a venue page that lists the exact source for each figure, with the publisher, the URL and the date it was accessed. If you are at a stadium and the board disagrees, the board wins — send us the photo and we will correct the record. Directions for that are on the methodology page.

Single-item rankings: hot dog index · beer index. Combos, basket-derived figures and compiled indexes are excluded from the basket; where a venue's only cited figures are value-menu prices, the row label says so.