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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Sunday, May 03, 2009
I’d like to read the mouseprint but the rantavirus is killing me!
But there was a certain apparent inequity to the way the Yankee ticket adjustment was framed - an inequity caused mostly by that blasted press release - that the franchise didn’t deserve. It was not offering a fifty percent rebate to the highest of the high rollers, and a token handful of tickets to the next group down. It was giving the people who did buy tickets, all the rest of the tickets that nobody had bought.
What remains unaddressed, of course, is the 2010 season. Not mentioned in any of the coverage of the cutbacks in the Bronx - at least that which I’ve seen - is that beginning this season, the Yankees instituted multi-year ticket licenses. The minimum commitment demanded of season seat-buyers at virtually all price ranges was three years. An inverted sliding scale of maximum annual price increases accompanied each deal (the longer you signed for, the less they could raise the price of your seats each winter), and the paperwork was as thick as a good-sized magazine. No matter what the economy does, it will be fascinating to see whether the Yankees try to enforce those price jumps next year, or hope they can just get people to pay what they agreed to in more halcyon days. Or 75% of that. Or 50%.
Because if they can’t, the most dreaded thing imaginable might happen. The Yankees might send out another one of these press releases.
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1. tfbg9 Posted: May 03, 2009 at 05:07 PM (#3162142)That would solve several of their problems - seats would be full on TV, the Yankees would get some good PR out of it, and the fatcats who had already paid for their fatcat seats wouldn't really have a leg to stand on because better deals were to be had late.
By the way, in regards to pricing like that, no one screams when two people on the same airplane paid radically different amounts for the same ticket. Why is this so different at Yankee Stadium?
The only downside I can think of is that those seatholders might have a difficult time finding a misplaced monocle if there are a lot of kids/other fans around them.
I have a full season package, with no commitment to future years. My seats are in the upper deck, but I think they're just fine. I tend to like KO, but he might define "virtually" differently than would most others.
Because Earl Battey is dead!
As if we're talking about sh1tty, unsold bleacher seats?
I think a better question is: "Why does TVerik hate America?"
It seems hard to believe. Seats to a sporting event are not meant (nor guaranteed) to keep one from an accidental meeting with someone not in your social class.
Those seats offer access to fancy lounge areas, too, right?
It would seem to me to be rather simple to not allow street urchins who were the beneficiaries of free tickets into those lounges.
Different seating. The bleachers were sold as a block - where you actually sit is dependant on when you showed up. Regular seats are sold per seat - you can look at your ticket and know specifically where your butt will be on gameday.
A better idea would be to randomly upgrade some of the season ticket holders in the less fancy seats every game. Or they could of course just distribute more fancy tickets free to those who have already bought the superexpensive ones.
It may not be that per se, but it may well be that they're thinking of the long range effects of having a group of full-price ticketholders knowing that those seats weren't quite so "exclusive" as they'd been advertised. And if what Olbermann says about the three-year requirement is correct, can you imagine what the renewal level for these $2500 seats would have been without it?
I mean, put yourself in the place of those premium seat holders right now. Even allowing for the fact that few of them likely put up their own money, they have to look around them at all the empty seats, and feel like the world's biggest chumps.*** How many of them would ever renew those seats in 2010 if not required to by contract?
***And I wonder how many of them ever run into friends who remind them what those same seats would have cost 30 years ago, while quietly snickering under their breath.
Most people don't know what the person next to them paid. If they did, I'd wager the airlines would take it in the chin.
So why can't people not know what the person in the seat next to them in a sports stadium paid?
I've been to the Fenway bleachers, and they're assigned seating.
Of course, after someone threw a full cup of beer at a pregnant woman wearing a Red Sox hat, I quietly removed my hat for the rest of the game...
It seems hard to believe. Seats to a sporting event are not meant (nor guaranteed) to keep one from an accidental meeting with someone not in your social class.
In fact, that's precisely what those seats are supposed to protect against.
Those seats are almost entirely owned by NYC businesses and used for corporate purposes. Until several years ago they were frequently used for personal purposes if there was no business use on that day, but after a change in the tax laws the personal use became far more restricted.
I know about these things because I basically became a Yankees fan from sitting in corporate seats from my father's work. (Unfortunately, to save money his employer has chosen seats in the DELTA360 club instead of the "Legends" seats.) Giving the seats away to street urchins or local youth organizations or what-have-you would completely destroy the reason people buy the tickets: to do business. I've tagged along as the "4th" when my pop had 2 clients to bring along and one empty seat: basically, they're doing business the whole time. The whole justification for the seats is that if the seat-user in banking/law/consulting could get one new deal from every 5 times he took out a client to the Stadium, that's a 100%+ return on the cost of the seats.
The above doesn't apply to "big" games; then, the seats go to big clients as favors to keep them happy and are presumably used by the guy to take his kids/buddies to the game. But there aren't going to be too many empty seats for those games, so that's a moot point.
I don't hate America, I just think "Sister Golden Hair" is over-played on oldies radio stations.
The one WW2-era radio guy I'd compare KO to is Norman Corwin.
Sister Golden Hair is a perfectly fine 70s bland rock song... now that atrocious acid trip song about the unnamed horse, on the other hand.
Wait that song is how I will remember the George W Bush Presidency.
Because the kids would wipe their boogers on the seats, and that will just not do.
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