Sandomir: Yanks Start ‘Desperate’ Campaign For Unsold Premium Seats
Via Richard Sandomir:
The Yankees’ campaign to market their unsold premium seats and luxury boxes at their new stadium continues. The Yankees want you to go premium. They’re tired of all this inventory of leftover (did we say cushioned?) seats, even if it’s a thousand or fewer.
One full-page ad in The New York Times promoted next weekend’s Select-a-Seat event. Another in The New York Post cooed, “We’re Holding Your Seat,” with a line pointing to Section 123, one of 14 Between the Bases, where tickets cost $325 each.
Last Sunday, a half-page ad in The Times was accompanied by a photograph of Derek Jeter in one of his leap-and-throw poses. It says, “Sit This Close to the Captain.”
Two of the ads end with a come-on, “Own the Greatness.” Besides the philosophical question of whether you can actually own greatness, even at $2,500 a seat, ownership is the pitch for personal-seat licenses, like those the Giants and the Jets are selling for their new stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. The P.S.L. is actually a stock certificate that confers the right to buy season tickets, but you can also sell it on the open market.
Every seat at the new Yankee Stadium is a rental, with no option to sell its rights.
The stadium is the Yankees’ stimulus package, but the unsold seats are making them feel short of full stimulation. The ads make the Yankees look a bit desperate; the last thing they want is for these seats — the “greatest in the world” the team has called them, which will be seen prominently on television — to be empty on opening day and beyond. Will we next see a casting call in Backstage for seat fillers for these magnificent seats?
The Yankees have reduced their hopes that all these seats will sell in full-season 81-game packages. So they’re settling for 41- and 20-game plans, too.
Personally, given some of the prices on these seats, I believe that the Yankees could start selling them on a single-game basis and still not be able to move them. In any event, this is a black-eye for the organization – and one that was self-inflicted and therefore well-deserved.
It’ll be interesting to see how this will be handled. But as one of the hoi polloi that’ll probably be regulated to an obstructed bleacher seat, I’m not shedding any tears
They priced me out of seats I’d take several years ago.
When they get more reasonable, so will I.
