How food prices at the Masters compare to the first ever event in 1934 — and what’s behind it
Food and drink at golf’s Masters tournament has always been a sizeable part of the event’s unique appeal. What’s harder to get your head around are the prices.
For such a classy competition that’s built on prestige, exclusivity and immaculate presentation, the numbers feel almost out of step with modern sport. They don’t just look cheap. They look positively stuck in time. Because, well, they kind of are.
The Masters has been held at Augusta National since way back in 1934. And in many ways the food offering hasn’t strayed very far at all from those early days.
Simple, classic sandwiches, snacks and drinks still dominate the menu and, nearly a century on, those prices have barely moved. Which creates a strange financial contrast when you consider the surrounding costs of attending the thing.
Getting through the gates can cost a small fortune depending on how you manage your logistics. Official tickets sit around $100 (£75) to $150 (£112) if you’re lucky enough to land them through the ballot. Try the secondary market and you can quickly be into the thousands just to get through the gates.
Once inside, luckily for attendees’ bank balances, something quickly shifts. The usual rules of major sporting events stop applying. There are no eye-watering mark-ups or sense that you’re being absolutely rinsed for a beer and a bite. Instead, the concession stands feel like a crazy pre-WWII throwback.
According to the Masters itself, ‘The humble beginnings of the tournament are nowhere more evident than in the food. It’s as much part of the mystique of the Masters as Amen Corner, the fare often pointed to as the keystone piece of the patron experience.’
That’s not just marketing fluff, either. Well, alright, it is a little bit. But it’s also a pretty clear statement of intent. One they back up too. After all, across the menu, most items sit between just $1 (75p) and $6 (£4.50). Now. In 2026.
That range and style of food – as well as the extremely competitive pricing – has long been part of the event’s identity. It’s also what makes the comparison with 1934 so striking.
Back at the very first Masters some 92 years ago, prices – while not super cheap – were still affordable. A club sandwich would set you back 75 cents (55p), while a pimento cheese sandwich cost far less.
But adjust those numbers for inflation and a 75c sandwich equates to well over $18 (£13.50) today, while the pimento cheese sandwich lands somewhere around the $7 (£5.20) mark in real terms. Suddenly, the modern menu doesn’t just look cheap by comparison, it looks deliberately cheap. And it is.
In other words, prices haven’t simply resisted inflation. They’ve actually beaten it. The same items that once matched everyday spending now undercut it, and that’s not something you stumble onto by accident.
The menu itself hasn’t changed much either. Almost at all. Simplicity still rules, with sandwiches leading the way alongside a handful of sweet options and drinks.
It’s a long way from the gourmet indulgence or just plain price-gouging insults punters are forced to endure at other major sporting events. Naming no names… Super Bowl.
The standout menu pick is still – and always will be – the iconic pimento cheese sandwich, which has become part of Masters folklore as much for its price as its taste. At $1.50 (£1.10) in 2026, it’s one of the cheapest things you’ll find at any big sporting event anywhere in the western world, with the egg salad sandwich sitting alongside it at the same price.
Move slightly up the scale and you’ll find chicken, barbecue, ham on rye, chicken salad and club sandwiches at around $3 (£2.20). Even those feel oddly low when you consider where you are. This is Augusta National, not your local sandwich van.
The snacks follow a similar pattern. This year, peach ice cream sandwiches, pecan caramel corn and white chocolate pecan cookies all sit between $1.50 and $3. Even the drinks avoid the usual excess, with beer coming in at around $6 and served in a collectible take-home souvenir cup.
For players, the concessions and their favourable prices are all part of the appeal as well. When Dustin Johnson was asked his favourite thing about the Masters after winning the event back in 2020, his answer was simple: ‘The sandwiches’. Asked to pick one, he couldn’t, replying: ‘All of them.’
The food is very much a shared experience across the event, something that cuts through the usual hierarchy and distance between players and fans. Everyone eats the same thing and everyone pays the same price.
The origins of that approach go back to the tournament’s earliest days. In the beginning, the menu was kept simple out of necessity, with food often prepared in local kitchens. Keeping it straightforward kept costs down and made the whole operation workable and repeatable.
Over time, that necessity turned into tradition, and at Augusta, tradition has a habit of sticking. What might have been a temporary solution became part of the very fabric of the event. It’s basically part of the Masters’ branding at this point.
That sense of tradition still shapes how the Masters operates. As Michelin-star chef James Syhabout put it when discussing the tournament’s menu, the key is to ‘stick with tradition’.
He also recommends taking advantage of the prices and stocking up. ‘I’ll take three,’ he says of his favourite menu item — the Georgia peach ice cream sandwich.
Former Augusta National chairman Billy Payne has stressed the importance of keeping prices accessible, saying: ‘We want the experience to not only be the best but to be affordable. And we take certain things very, very seriously. Like the cost of a pimento cheese sandwich is just as important as how high the second cut of grass is going to be.’
There’s also a more practical explanation behind it all. Sports economist Steven Salaga has previously pointed out that keeping concession prices low can actually make the overall event generally more alluring to fans.
As he explains: ‘One way to make the overall experience more appealing to the consumer is to keep the price of these complementary products like concessions low.’ He also notes that ‘concession sales are just one relatively small portion of their overall revenue stream.’
The fact is, the Masters does pretty well for itself, financially speaking. Organisers don’t release official figures, but Forbes estimates put tournament-week revenue at somewhere between $140m to $150m (£110m–£120m).
Concessions account for a relatively small slice of that, at roughly $8m (£6m). That’s around 5% of total income. The rest comes from tickets, merchandise and – most importantly – global TV rights.
That helps explain why the Masters doesn’t treat food as a primary revenue stream in quite the same way that many other events do. Instead, it treats it as part of the overall experience that it’s trying to create.
There’s also a somewhat wider effect at play here. Keeping prices low generates a sense of goodwill that money can’t easily buy. It becomes part of the story every year, something people talk about, share and compare. We’re doing it here. That’s pretty great marketing, right?
In a sporting world where fans are used to shelling out an hour’s wage for two thirds of a cup of beer and thinking they got off lightly, this whole approach stands out.
One of the most exclusive events in sport also happens to serve some of the cheapest food and drink. Which is about as far from par for the course as it gets.