Tuesday, March 3, 2009

What's going on with Yankee season tickets?

I wrote last week about the rising cost of tickets at the new stadium. And the controversy over obstructed view - or should I say "architectually shadowed," as per Lonn Trost - seats is just one of the issues Yankee fans have been squawking about.

Squawker reader Jennie weighs in with her experience with the Yanks' ticket office:
For the last 6 years I've had a 20-game flex plan, with seats in the tier reserve behind home plate. Two years ago my seats cost $18 each - last year they cost $27 each.

I'd been waiting to get an email from the Yankees regarding my relocation, but hadn't received anything. A friend told me that what i needed to go was go into my online account and the information would be there (how i was supposed to know this, God knows). Anyway, he was right - the info WAS there. And imagine my surprise when U discovered I had been allocated a 20-game plan, but in field level seats, waaaaaay waaaaaay out in the outfield, practically as far as the bleachers - at $85 per seat!

At least that made the decision easy - I have declined the allocation. In what universe would I want to pay more than three times the amount I paid previously, for seats where I can't even tell who's at bat without binoculars?
Jennie also writes that she has heard a ton of other Yankee ticket horror stories from friends, and about how friends stuck with bad tickets end up selling a bunch of them via StubHub. She notes:
It's really hard to understand how the yankees could have screwed things up so much that NOBODY is getting the locations they want, on the dates they want, at the price they want to pay.

On the other hand, StubHub seems to be doing quite well out of this - there are thousands of tickets available for just about every game, some even at below face value.
And the Yankees will profit twice from those tickets - once when selling them to the fans, and the second time via their profit-sharing arrangement with StubHub. Also, remember that season ticket holders caught selling their tix anywhere but StubHub will get their tickets revoked. Nice!

Kevin of Big League Stew points out that there are some MLB teams with 81-game season ticket plans that cost less than it does for two people to go to one game in the $325 luxury seats at the new Yankee Stadium. But given how much advertising that the Yankees are advertising for these expensive ducats and boxes - they're all over the New York Times and Wall Street Journal - I don't think the tix are exactly selling like hotcakes.

But what do you think? Leave us a comment!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

For a while there I was so envious of Yankees fans, because it seemed that the ticketing situation was so much more sensible than over in Mets territory. You had the web site, you had actual communication, etc. You knew you were going to get screwed out of your seating locations, but - YOU KNEW.

Now I am sort of embracing my lowly Promenade Level seats over at Taxpayer Field. We had to compete against everyone else in our seniority bucket but years of buying Bruce Springsteen tickets had trained us well.

My sympathies. You all deserve better than this.

Anonymous said...

I've had the 15 game Sunday plan for the last 4 years and I still haven't received my invoice for seats at the New Stadium. I sent the relocation office an email about a week ago to find out what was going on, and they told me I'll have my invoice in 1-2 weeks. Something tells me that in 2 weeks I'm gonna receive an e-mail saying there are no seats left...except, of course, those $350 seats.

Anonymous said...

I don't usually curse online, I'm not that guy, but I really fcuking hate that ticket scalping was and is illegal unless the teams can profit off it somehow.

Anyway they can rip us off is fine.

Anonymous said...

I hope that the press is looking into what companies are buying these $2000 seats. I bet they are the same companies WE are bailing out !!

mhochman said...

The whole ticketing process is flawed, When I was trying to get Mets/Sox tickets in 2006 at Fenway, I waited online in their virtual queue, for about 7 hours trying to buy tickets, all the while while i am still in the queue, i see tickets going up on StubHub, when i am finally able to actually get tickets, all that are left are Standing Room.

And don't get me started on Scalpers, in 2000, My wife could not make it to opening day, so i had an extra ticket, There was a woman saying she needed a ticket, so i offered to sell her my extra, for LESS than face value, and she pulls out a badge and says come with me, confiscated my extra ticket (luckily she let me keep my game ticket) and wrote me a summons all not 10 feet away from someone scalping tickets.

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