What If No Ones Pays What Yanks Are Asking?
I recently saw the current edition of HBO Real Sports – that touched on the issue around the cost of Yankees tickets next season. If you missed it, Fang Bites has a great recap on it – including the part that really hit home with me:
And rising ticket prices are scaring off those who can afford them, like long time Yankees fan Marshall Goldberg who has been sitting in the same box seat at Yankee Stadium for over 30 years. When Goldberg first bought his season tickets in 1976, they cost $8 a ticket and the World Series went up to $15. Goldberg says the prices have gone up over the years, but the increases were reasonable until about three years ago. He says in 2006, the ticket cost $105, then up to $135 in ’07 and to $150 this year. Goldberg says that’s when he knew trouble was coming. That trouble is the new Yankee Stadium that will open across the street from the current edifice next year.
When the Yankees called Goldberg to see if he was going to purchase season tickets for the new stadium, he was flabbergasted to hear the sales pitch. He says with those seats, he can get all the food he can eat for free, free parking and special bathrooms built for certain seat holders. Goldberg said that sounded nice, what was the cost? He was told $2,500 per seat. He said that comes to $10,000 per game and there are 81 games. The Yankees would be sending him an invoice for $810,000 for a ticket that cost $81,000 the previous year.
Although he has shared his love of the Yankees over the years with his sons and grandchildren, Goldberg says he’ll be ending his relationship with the team after this season. Goldberg says he would be embarrassed to sit in a seat that costs $2,500. He says it’s the end of an era of an individual holding decent seats in a stadium. Bryant says after over 30 years, he must know the other ticket holders around him. He asked if they’ll be coming back and Goldberg says no. They can’t afford to. Goldberg says that area will all be corporate seats from now on.
In fact, just today, I got another e-mail from a Yankees sales rep asking me if I was interested in buying some of their “premium seats” in the new Stadium. That’s at least three times since last March that they’ve made this push on me.
It’s a joke, really. The fewest seats that anyone would buy in a package is two. So, based on what Marshall Goldberg said on HBO, that would be $405,000 for the season in the “great seats” section. Sorry, no “person” would ever buy that plan – unless they were Bon Jovi or someone like that. Heck, I’m not even sure if many “corporations” would be willing to spend $400,000 to $800,000 a year for a few seats to 81 Yankees games.
Wouldn’t it be something if the Yankees actually got stuck with some of these seats next season because no one would buy them?
I’ve been talking about this for two years, on this blog. With the overhead of the out-of-control costs of the new stadium (Lon sure did a great job keeping costs down – not), bankruptcy is a possibility in a few short years. For the team, not the fans.
Certainly likely that the team will be sold within five years, to people who could care less about baseball.
I don’t think it will happen, but if you wanted to design a plan for disaster, the Yankees are doing it. The price of the stadium is now what? At about $1.5 billion?
It wasn’t that long ago that it was a very good day when they could sell out half the stadium (at reasonable prices). Obviously of late, the dominance and winning have made the team ‘the event’ for bandwagoners.
Yet we are missing the PS this year and next year we might have a very similar team with one additonal big name (CC/Tex/Sheets?). It does not look like next year we will have a dominant team. 2 of of leading 3 kids have disappointed (Phil and Tabata, while Joba is gold). While we have a lot of arms on the farm, I don’t know if you can predict and very strong team over the next 3 years based on the farm.
So…. if the Yankees miss the PS this year, and next year’s 1st year of the new stadium, will corporations pay close to a million dollars for Yankee seats in 2010? I just can’t see many individuals paying $1-$5 thousand dollars for them and a friend to go to ONE ballgame. It’s nuts.
It will be interesting to see how this turns out.
There’s no shortage of money or idiots and the “new park effect” will sell seats for several years.
It’s not bad yet, but people will not go to the games if the Yankees become like Toronto, a perennial third place team. It would be funny if they didn’t have many sellouts next year, but it serves them right. Price the little guy out of the market and the Stadium will look like the Stadium during the Blah Blah 80s. There are fairweather Yankee fans that would jump to Citi Field in a second if the Mets win the World Series this year. Then those ticket prices would be reduced accordlingly. Kay even thought that might happen. Trust me, if the Yanks are a Third place team next year,it’s the beginning of the end of milking fans. Especially now that the Mets have Citi Field and they might have a championship or even be in the playoffs. That is an edge that the Yanks will not have.
I know 2 guys who have shared seats on field level for years. They are both ‘wealthy’ by any definition. But they are not renewing in the new stadium. Too expensive.
Also, I wonder how much the economy will have an impact. I have Jet tickets and I usually sell a few games to pay for the ones I go to. In the past, I could count on getting 3-4x the face value for the Patriot game. Right now, I am hoping to get at least double, and I see tons of tickets for sale on ebay and stubhub.
A sign of the times?
This is a little misleading on a number of fronts. I just took a quick glance at the HBO Real Sports episode. Marshall’s seats this year were 250 each (not 150), based on both his comments and any possible mapping to the 2500 seat for next year.
“He says it’s the end of an era of an individual holding decent seats in a stadium.” That’s amusing. 2500 seats are only in the front row between the dugouts next year; if his seats map to this, he may not be representative of an “individual holding decent seats”. Sounds as if his seats are currently front row Field Championship, and he was offered from row Legends next year. Note that Legends are actually new seats in front of the current Field Championship seats; while he will not be front row, he has essentially right of first refusal for his new seats at 325 each (behind the up to 9 rows of new Legends seats). The new Legends seats would be a slightly different consideration; he still has claim on those original seats. This was not mentioned; takes away from the story obviously. 250 to 325, yawn… Poor Marshall…
Also, unless he currently has front row on a dugout, he’s not actually front row in the current stadium – as they have (I believe) 162 Legends seats in front of the Field Championship sections everywhere aside from over the dugouts themselves. I’m not feeling Marshall’s pain.
But it’s a really nice misleading story on how terrible prices are, and the “average” fan (not quite like Marshall) is being greviously hurt. From the newly released seating chart, it appears as though some sections are actually decreasing in price – and a majority of the others are not increasing dramatically. True that partial season ticket holders may be hurt (not familiar with the specifics of how the team is handling the relocation, but this could be possible), and that they are adding new premium sections (Legends, Main and Terrace). But other than those that decline Legends seating and want to keep their Field Championship seats – and now have up to 9 additional rows in front of them, what’s the problem?
Note that the Main premium section replaces the old corporate luxury boxes (no dis-location of ticket holders) and the Terrace premium covers Tier Box MVP – who got right of first refusal on the new seats.
What’s Bryant going to cook up next? Something about a NYC landlord and golf? Oh, that’s the next segment in the show…