Matthews: New York Fans Reached Limit With Cost Of Games
Via Wallace Matthews last Saturday –
The evidence is mounting rapidly. In the Bronx, 23 home dates and only one announced sellout, on Opening Day. In Flushing, the same number of dates, the same number of sellouts.
Through Friday, the Mets and Yankees were leading their divisions. Yet there are plenty of seats available at both new ballparks despite a winter of priceless free publicity and an endless stream of hype during each team’s broadcasts.
The teams knew attendance would be down this year — they engineered the parks to hold fewer people and rake in more money — but still, they were designed to operate at full capacity every night, and so far, each has managed to do that. Once.
If early-season baseball attendance in New York is a referendum on just how far our teams can push their fan bases, the fans in Flushing and the Bronx have voted, and the results appear to be pretty definitive.
The answer is, not much further.
OK, so neither the new Yankee Stadium nor its counterpart in Flushing can handle the capacity of their predecessors. Fine. But where are the 53,070 people who came nightly to the old Yankee Stadium in 2008, and where are the 49,902 who showed up every night in the final season of Shea Stadium?
So far, the Yankees are averaging 44,636 in their new crib, the Mets 38,806. If baseball is so popular in this town and Yankees and Mets games truly are must-see events, as both clubs insisted throughout the offseason, why aren’t there 10,000 people milling around outside their ballparks every game night, trying to buy up every last ticket in the house, and the rest going home empty-handed and disappointed?
One of the reasons, of course, is simple and self-evident. It’s the economy, stupid. But in a metropolitan area that certainly has more than 83,442 people – the combined average attendance at both parks – wealthy enough to buy their way into these exclusive clubs dressed as ballparks, there has to be something more to it.
It just might be that the remarkably deep-pocketed, thick-skinned and resilient sports fans of this town finally have reached their limit.
Clearly, people are opting out of spending exorbitant amounts to witness baseball games in the flesh, especially when it is much more economical, not to mention fan-friendly, to simply plop down in the recliner in front of the HDTV, crack a beer, pop your own corn and not have to contend with traffic, or shell out $19 for parking and $10 for tolls, and heaven knows how much else at the concession stands.
It’s simply no longer worth it, no matter how good the team is or how deeply ingrained in your DNA the ritual of going to the ballpark on a summer night really is.
Gotta say…I figure that the five Yankees games which I plan on attending this season is going to cost me about $1,000, all told, when you factor everything in…
…and, at times, I have thought about taking that money and buying the biggest, baddest, high-def, television and just watching all the games on that puppy…
…so, if others are thinking the same thing…it might become the wave of the future.
…and if does, the prices will come down.
That’s the way that works. Or the price of YES to Cablevision and the other cable networks will go up, and therefore the price of your cable TV bill will go up.
Or both, probably.
Next fall he story will read something like this….. The (insert team) have reassessed their ticket price strategy to better serve their loyal fan base. Ticket prices, on average, will be ~ 25% higher than equivalent seat prices at the old stadium….
The throngs will cheer. Bottom line for both of these clubs is that that were well aware what the ticket brokers were getting for choice seats. They figured, “What the hell, lets just cut out the middle man and pocket the coin ourselves.” Problem is: 1) the middle man would be getting killed in the current market, so instead the ballclubs are taking the brunt, and 2) the middle man was never trying to sell every seat to every game like the ballclubs are attempting to peddle. On any given night, there were people willing to call a broker to get a choice seat for a 40th birthday celebration, someone visiting Yankee Stadium once a year, a big client in town, etc….. But no person, and very few businesses, can justify $800,000 plus for 4 tickets for a season. My company had great seats at ~ $2400 and we bailed out. They offered us $300 seats up the line, but we still declined.
In the end, the market always wins. Those tickets will have to come down in price.
The only fans that the Yankees are alienating are the non-super-rich. I doubt the drop-off in attendance is enough to overcome the much higher ticket prices this year, so they’re probably making more money despite the crappy economy, which is quite a feat. Seems to me like effective price discrimination on their part.
I already did the HDTV thing. I’m going to physically attend maybe a couple games a year and watch the rest on beautiful 42″ plasma.
The only fans that the Yankees are alienating are the non-super-rich.
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I would argue that this isn’t the case since the 200 and 300 sections of the ballpark are always full and it’s the lower deck that has been the problem.
I had the Sunday plan…Nice seats in the upper deck, 4 rows back, by 3rd base. This year they offered me seats by the foul pole. I got pushed away because most of us couldn’t afford field level. I declined. Why sit back there when I could just stay home and watch on TV?
I plan on seeing 2 or 3 games this year. I have tix this week at 1/2 the face value, front row, Terrace, at 1st base.
From the beginning, I believed that the teams were looking at the secondary market and believed that they could get that money instead of the ticket holders who resold them.
Problem is, different people were buying the seats each night. Maybe I go to stubhub and pay a premium for one or two games. But now they are asking someone to pay for a full season of seats at that high price.
It also changes the character of the fan. The guy who bought good seasons tix and sold half or more is now moved to the upper deck or the sofa.
A big shame is what it is.