Just moments before I embarked for the Baseball Prospectus 2009 Baltimore whistle stop earlier this week, I got a call from my friend Nick, the “commissioner” of our aggrieved group of Yankees partial-plan ticket holders. Two weeks after turning down the team’s generous offer to accept $85 dollar obstructed view seats behind the right field foul pole instead of $25 grandstand seats, a representative from the Yankees ticket office had phoned Nick to apologize for the way the renewals had been handled, offering us a closer approximation to our initial request. Instead of a 20-game set of $25 grandstand seats between first and third base, we were offered $20 seats just beyond first, in section 413, three rows from the back of the stadium. No word on whether complimentary oxygen tanks would be provided.
As tempting as it might have been to tell the Yankees where to stick that offer given the way we and so many other fans had been treated, in the end, we accepted the deal. The desire to preserve the continuity of our 11-season tradition of making the occasional trip to the ballpark in each other’s company trumped our distaste for the new world order in the Bronx. Still, this is no happy ending. In spite of a belatedly semi-favorable outcome, this episode still represents one more data point in a long line of them detailing the demise of the Yankee brand, at least from the nosebleed seats where we’ll now sit.
As it is, our group is spending only about one-quarter of the dollars we did on last year’s 26-game Flex Plan Tier Box seats—a steep decline in our outlay which makes it clear we’ve voted with our wallets. We’ve lost our automatic access to playoff tickets, but particularly since 2004 (the last time the Yanks made it to the ALCS), that’s scarcely amounted to anything beyond a winter-long interest-free loan for tickets to games that never happened.
While my “Bronx Bummer” piece certainly received a lot of attention, I lack the hubris to think that my squeaky-wheel antics elicited the grease enabling this deal to go down. My name isn’t on the ticket account, and while a resourceful sleuth scouring my web site might have eventually figured it out, I have a hard time squaring that possibility against the collective mental faculties of a ticket office for which this represents an acceptable opening salvo. I’m extremely hopeful that ours is just one of many groups whom the Yankees have suddenly figured out how to accommodate, and would like to hear from the readers who shared their own tales of woe as to whether you’ve received a similar remedy.
Furthermore, I’d like to thank those of you who chimed in to offer your support, whether or not you found yourself in the same boat. I heard from fans of several teams outside of New York as well as many a disgruntled Yankees fan, and once again found that misery loves company. Numerous bloggers and a few mainstream media types picked up the story and thus amplified it, one even providing me with a doozy of a clipping for my files. Several other reporters found no shortage of men and women in the streets willing to fill column inches with similar narratives. A special hat-tip to colleague and friend Neil deMause, who’s been doggedly pursuing the ugly truth about the new Yankee Stadium for years now and who provided a bit of space to help amplify my side of this sordid saga. But you can ask anybody from among the Yankees’ potential ticket holders, and they’ll just tell you this is just another Bronx tale
Mike Fancesa has bitched about this problem on YES an even had some Yankee brass on to address the issue.
The bottom line - increased requests for FULL season tickets have taken up the very seats formerly occupied by PARTIAL season ticket holders.
I guess you could argue whether the team should have shown more loyalty to long time PARTIAL season holders than new customers willing to pay a FULL season bill, but most businesses prefer the customer with the most green in their hand.
Fair enough, but that did go against what Yankee COO Lonn Trost said in one of those Francesca interviews (http://www.fieldofschemes.com/news/archives/2009/03/3568_yanks_trost_one_1.html), and it still doesn't mean the Yankees should brazenly attempt to bully their less invested customers into spending more money, which is what they did.
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Did you have the opportunity to upgrade to a full season package to keep your tickets? If so why did you turn it down?
Do you really expect the team to find 3 other 20-game patrons to fill those same seats for the rest of the year instead of finding one patron to cover all 80 games?
Try going on-line to buy tickets to even a few games and realize how good you had it. Better yet try to get those tickets from a broker.
I'm trying to figure out why MLB teams aren't charging 3x the prices of tickets. At least they'd get the money instead of the broker or whatever version of Ticketmaster exists now.
You're mystified that we don't come up with a bigger pile of dough to shell out for 81 games, AND you're mystified that it's so difficult and expensive to buy single-game tickets?
Then I suppose it also stands to reason that you're mystified as to why we chose to occupy the comfortable, affordable middle ground between those two extremes for the past 11 years.
Jay, I love your work, so it hurts to say this, but:
You caved. You took the scraps the Yankees tossed you. You decided it was worth it. I'm sorry, but complaining about a deal you freely and knowingly agreed to is as unprincipled as anything the Yankees did.
yeah jay, heaven forbid you weigh the options and still decide that regularly going to baseball games with friends was, you know, really fun.
i mean, seriously, what benefit would he get from taking a "principled" stand (like this is civil rights or something?) against an organization with a near-infinite revenue stream AND a new stadium? if you're saying you would fight the good fight and just NEVER go to your favorite team's games again, good for you - that's your choice. but assuming you are a die-hard fan, you'd clearly be the only one losing value in that decision...
It was decision made in the interest of a group (one whose opportunities to spend time together are increasingly fleeting), not by one person, and anyway, it would have been a lot less fun to spend a season writing about baseball without regularly going to a major league ballpark.
In the end the Yankees got even less $ out of us than we intended to spend on this season, and the fact that we've reduced our spending on Yankees tickets by 75% is enough of a statement.
I am reminded of the part in Ken Burns Baseball miniseries where the guy who is interviewed was from Brooklyn. His father was a huge Dodgers fan and a huge National League fan. When the Mets came to New York it wasn't exactly the same, but they often went to ballgames. However, they never went when the Mets played the Dodgers because his father never wanted Walter O'Malley to get another penny from him and he knew the Dodgers got a share of ticket revenue even in games in New York.
20 years ago Wayne Gretzky came to the Los Angeles Kings. During that offseason the Kings raised season tickets twice, once right after the end of the season and once after they made the gretzky trade. I told them they could have their season tickets. I have been to one kings game since then, and those were on a corporation's tickets.
I went to 40 Kings games a year. I loved hockey. But I'm not a sheep to be fleeced every year.
Someday, everyday fans will come to the same conclusion. Maybe not in NY or Boston but in places like Denver, Phoenix, and Los Angeles were there are a lot of other things to do outside most of the year.
Professional sports are turning into TV shows with a live studio audience (NFL), and I choose not to be their patsy anymore.
Hooray for the love of the great outdoors. Don't get me wrong, I love baseball but it amuses me to no end that something whose origins as a collectivist activity (sports in general) have so completely turned into a spectator only event. And yet we, as a society, wonder why there are so many unhealthily overweight teens.
Couldn't you and your friends Mr. Jaffe engage in an activity other than attending a professional sporting event - the pleasure of which is becoming increasingly tied to the win or lose outcome. Maybe a concert? Or an art show? Or giving some time to your local little league? Or something contributing to the greater good - I don't know, maybe volunteer at a youth shelter together, or initiate an inter-community forum on health care possibilities for the currently uninsured? I just do not buy the argument that there is no other way for you and your collective group of friends to spend time together beside contributing to the NYY business organization. Said artifice which has clearly demonstrated it has no concern for you.
Where did he say that this was the only way for the group to spend time together? And why is going to an art show or a concert empirically better than attending a baseball game?
Imagining, as you seem to do, that only uncultured boors enjoy going to pro sporting events, or that attending said events in anyway excludes one from doing any of the things you mention is completely asinine, not to mention unfounded.
Some people like to relax and bond at baseball games, even if, as in this case, the circumstances are imperfect. Get over yourself.
Question, misterjohnny, did you decide when looking over the numbers, that while you were willing to spend X per cent of your income on Kings tickets you were not willing to spend X + Y? Or were you simply offended by the idea of a double price increase that reflects an expectation of increased demand for a Gretzky team? My guess is the latter, and if so, that makes no sense to me.
As another poster mentioned, ticket prices aren't about teams' fleecing an unsuspecting public (although a good argument can be made that venue subsidies are just that) but instead reflect individuals who are making decisions for themselves about how much they are willing to pay. If you're unable or unwilling to match those amounts, it hardly means that those who do are "patsies".
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Learn to read. Seriously, take a reading comprehension course. You need it badly.
I said nothing about the DECISION to buy the tickets. Nothing. That's a value calculus I can't judge.
What I said was that Jay telling the Yankees their offer is just fine, and then running to BP to use it as a pulpit to bash the Yankees for not offering more than he was willing to accept is unprinicpled. I'll stand by that.
And Jay - take a look at your responses to paying customers robin3mj and sbnirish above, and take your own advice.
Have the Yankees announced their outside-food policy, btw? The Mets promised early on that their policy wouldn't change (you can bring in anything that's not glass bottles, so long as you let them search your bags with electron microscopes), but the Yanks refused to say, which was worrisome.
yeah, i'm a 13-years running season ticket holder and got re-routed to the bleachers this year. honestly, i forgive them because the yanks are sincerely putting the best product they can on the field, going the extra $$$millions for Teixera and co with the money theyre making off these new digs.
Actually, the Yankee payroll is similar to last year's, so you can't really press the point that this year's model is tied to any new revenue. They may be putting the best product they can find on the field, but it's not just about the (new) monies.
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Er, maybe I'm just a capitalist dick, but why do the Yankees owe their fans anything? It's a business, not a commune. You can make arguments about what they're doing as a business strategy, but they're probably making a lot more money this way regardless of how many people they're pissing off. It remains a fact that demand for sports tickets (at least, those of the Yankees and comparable clubs) far outstrips supply, and therefore the price SHOULD be higher. Moving into a new stadium is just a convenient excuse to shift prices closer to where they belong.
Well, for those fans who live and pay taxes in New York City...yeah, they literally do owe us. And we've decided not to charge them interest. How do you think they built that new stadium in the first place?
Seriously, you're right, the Yankees could probably jack up prices much higher at the stadium, and make more money this season. But then they'd be playing to a half-full house much of the year, and after months of horrible publicity, come 2010, they'd probably have to rebuild their season ticket holder base virtually from scratch. Back in the early and mid-90s, they worked very hard to build up this base of virtually guaranteed, low-maintenance income, and it's in their self-interest not to have to do that again in this brutal economy. Good capitalists understand the importance of maintaining good relationships with their customers.
It isn't just Jay. My brother also got an extremely conciliatory phone call and better offer, after rejecting a package in the very last row of the upper deck. I suspect a lot of people turned down that first offer, and after years of capacity crowds, I think that the ticket sales folks had forgotten what the word "no" sounded like. Probably a very rude awakening for them.
Derek, I understand where you're coming from re: taxpayer money, but that seems to me like it's more an issue with the politicians you've elected rather than the team itself. There are lots of businesses in this country that screw over way more people than the Yankees have (i.e. every corn and sugar farmer in the US does it when they successfully lobby to limit sugar imports)...I don't blame the businesses for doing it, it's smart for them. I blame the politicians for being stupid enough to let them get away with it, or the people for electing politicians that don't represent their interests.
Your argument about long-term revenue is a lot more interesting to me, and is more along the lines of what I was suggesting -- maybe it's a questionable business strategy to jack up prices and remove ticketholder flexibility, in which case the Yankees shouldn't do it. But to suggest that they have some sort of moral obligation to fans to keep ticket prices low seems ridiculous to me. If raising prices and pissing people off is a bad business strategy, they'll be punished by the market...we don't need to get up in arms about it in the nat'l media.
Explain again why the Yankees aren't at fault for lobbying to use taxpayer money on a new stadium. To me at least the Yankees are at fault just as the politicians who allowed them to do this. Morality is a two way street. The one who suggests something immoral is just as much in the wrong as the one who allows them to follow through on their suggestion.
Because you have to be joking to suggest that using taxpayer money stupidly is immoral. It's not immoral, it's just stupid.
Additionally, the Yankees are a business, and their responsibility is not to the city, but rather to their shareholders, i.e. the Steinbrenners (and whichever minority owners). Their responsibility is to make money, and if the best way to do that is to get economic rents (stadium aid in this case), then that's what they should do. If you're pissed about public financing, run for office or vote for someone who's opposed to public financing.
I don't think it's quite that simple, Ben. After all, baseball has an anti-trust exemption, which strongly implies that franchises have an obligation to the public, that baseball is more than just a business. In addition, the new Yankee Stadium wouldn't have been possible with out government assistance. With that in mind, the Yankees behaved quite badly when they artificially increased demand in the new stadium by reducing the number of seats, one year after the team drew well over 4 million fans. Between the four thousand inexpensive seats that disappeared, and the creation of luxury seats in areas that were formerly comprised of affordable seats, the Yankees have made it quite clear that the middle class and working class fans whose taxes helped pay for the stadium aren't important to them, and that, frankly is a betrayal of the spirit of the anti-trust exemption. (Not that its the first or last such betrayal in baseball).
I don't know that I would characterize the demand as "artificially increased." It could be argued that demand is essentially the same, but capacity fell. The bigger issue is that pricing is typical elastic, with ticket prices often rising from year to year anyway.
The Yankees are the wealthiest team in baseball, if not pro sports. And they are that way because they do such a great job of leveraging the system. (By comparison, the Mets are wealthy, but not like the Yankees, despite having the same basic resources to work from.) The criticisms of the taxpayer-funded ballpark are well-founded. I wonder why those same taxpayers aren't tossing out the politicians who signed away their paychecks. That's where the outrage should lie. The Yankees were just doing what the Yankees always do, and will continue to do until New Yorkers stop mindlessly forking over their wallets.
"I don't know that I would characterize the demand as 'artificially increased.' It could be argued that demand is essentially the same, but capacity fell."
"capacity fell" Makes it sound as though the decline in capacity was something that "happened", rather than a conscious decision on the part of the Yankees. Or are you suggesting the Yankees weren't involved in the decision-making regarding capacity in the new stadium? Keep in mind, the new stadium has a larger footprint than the old stadium.
No, I'm not suggesting the Yankees weren't involved. Of course they were.
I'm thinking of the matter more in terms of a purely economic problem. But I would take issue with your position that the ballpark couldn't have been built without government assistance, assuming that by "government assistance" you mean tax breaks/funds (and not just the necessary permits that obviously go hand-in-hand with any construction project). Unlike most teams, the Yankees could have used the traditional means -- bond issues, bank loans, cash out of pocket, etc. to finance it. But they had the opportunity to stick the taxpayers and so they did. Given the chance, most of us would have done the same.
And I don't think the issue here is whether the Yankees offer more seats or less; at least, that's not the issue to the Yankees. (Perhaps that's what you are saying -- that it should be.) The Yankees have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, and (I'm guessing) to the rest of MLB, not to their fans. If, thanks to more and larger boxes, seat licenses and other means the Yankees can generate more revenue from a fewer number of seats, I guess I don't see why they should do otherwise.
There's a lot of precedent in baseball for building smaller parks. The Jake is smaller than the old Municipal Stadium (by some 31,000 seats) and no one complained. Memorial Stadium in Baltimore had a greater capacity than does Camden Yards. Likewise for the old Astrodome vs. Minute Maid Park. The new park didn't go up in a day; there was ample time for NY citizens (and ticketholders) to argue the point before it became a fait accompli.
The anti-trust exemption, publicly-financed stadiums and the question of a franchise's obligation to the public are a very thought provoking triumvirate. What role do sports play in our collective conscience, the "only winners matter" attitude that has spawned the Enrons, Madoffs, Blackwaters, two Bush-Cheney reigns of terror, Swiss bank accounts, et al. I do realize how far afield this stream of consciousness has run, and the likely multitude of negative replies, but it's out there nonetheless.
Er, that's a mischaracterization of demand and supply. It's not possible to artificially increase demand by reducing supply, they are two completely separate concepts. You're also mischaracterizing my argument -- it's not the fact that the Yankees moved into a smaller stadium that increased prices. They probably should have increased prices either way, this was just a good excuse.
Yes, I agree, the Yankees screwed their fans. They absolutely did things that fans don't like, and if I was a Yankees fan I'd be pissed. But should I also be pissed when Microsoft stops product support for an old piece of software and forces me to buy a new one? Maybe, but no one complains nearly as voraciously about it.
I don't buy at all the argument that the antitrust exemption means that baseball "owes the public" something. It means that a long time ago, baseball got one over on the government. Politicians are, by and large, stupid. It's not a secret to anyone. If they were smart, they wouldn't be politicians, they'd be owning/running a business like the Yankees and manipulating stupid politicians. The government also protects corn and sugar farmers from foreign competition (which is essentially an antitrust exemption across borders), but no one gets pissed about real sugar being so expensive that we're eating high fructose corn syrup which is significantly less tasty, not to mention the fact that sugar quotas increase gas prices since Brazil refines ethanol much more efficiently from sugar cane than the US does from corn.
coolerking--As I mentioned in another comment, you need the antitrust exemption as much as the MLB does, so quit trying to hold that over the Yankees' heads.
Also, I have a problem with your argument on the capacity of Yankee Stadium. You seem to be saying that the Yankees did their fans a disservice by shrinking the number of seats. But here's my question: would you have been offended if they had kept the stadium EXACTLY THE SAME SIZE? It should offend you, because even at Yankee Stadium's old capacity (and ticket prices), there would be plenty of "middle class and working class fans whose taxes helped pay for the stadium" that STILL couldn't attend games, EVEN IF THEY BUILT THE NEW ONE IDENTICAL TO THE OLD ONE. So then you'd be saying that it's the Yankees' obligation to not only keep the new stadium the same size, but to INCREASE the capacity, possibly by a very large margin.
But if that happens, the increased supply will drive ticket prices down, and then the Yankees can't spend $800 million on free agents, and then people might not go to the games nearly as much, and then you have EXCESS supply. My overall point is this: you had no problem before, but the previous capacity of Yankee Stadium was arbitrary, and that was okay. But now you're upset because the Yankees are shrinking the arbitrary number, and logically that doesn't make sense, since it assumes that the arbitrary number was somehow "correct" in the first place.
They need to continue to fool fans into believing that the team is part of the community and not just another business. Demand would never outstrip supply if it was just people watching good baseball players play. The teams need fans to be emotionally invested or the house of cards that is demand falls apart. So while they don't OWE fans anything, they need to keep the fans interests in mind.
The Yankees are a business, correct, but a rather peculiar one - one that has a federally-protected anti-trust exemption, and also one which takes enormous amount of taxpayer money to offer its product. Not just in terms of the stadium, but the infrastructure (subways, roads, etc.) and manpower (cops, security, street crews, etc.). Given that its operation would be impossible without the support of taxpayers, then I do believe they have every obligation to give back to their community. It may not be a commune, but it's certainly not a "business" in the truest sense of the word.
Name me one business that DOESN'T require the use of infrastructure and municipal manpower.
Also, you make it sound like the antitrust exemption is something that the team gets as a "courtesy" from the fans and government (and thus the team owes the fans something).
The exemption does, of course, benefit the team, but it's also in YOUR (i.e., the fan's) best interests that the MLB has a non-competition agreement. The talent in baseball would be horribly diluted if we had tens of leagues running around competing for players. So don't make it sound like you deigned to bless MLB with this gift of an antitrust exemption. The fans need the exemption as much as the players do.
As for the stadium, well, you voted for it. Not directly, of course, but you voted for the politicians who approved it. If you wanted some kind of concessions from the team in exchange for the stadium funding, you should have gotten them in writing. With no such agreement, the team has no obligation to you, except insofar as you can "vote with your wallet," by choosing not to attend Yankees games.
Well, I can think of many internet-based businesses that rely very little -if at all -on taxpayer-funded institutions. Besides, of course, the infrastructure already in place that allows for nearly unlimited internet availability.
Your argument about baseball "needing" the ATE to insure the "best players" are in one league is absurd. Basketball, Football and Hockey don't have the ATE, and all the best players are in the NBA, NFL, and NHL, despite other "competing" leagues (CFL, Arena Football, the old USFL or XFL, CBA, NBADL, etc.)
The free market takes care of that problem pretty easily.
As I don't live in New York, I have no real horse in this race. I do believe that taxpayer-subsidized businesses like the Yankees, ones that make massive profits, should give back to the community. Like any corporation that receives tax breaks, there should be conditions attached to them. If a factory gets a tax abatement, they have to provide jobs, or else they lose that abatement. The Yankees should set aside some seats that are affordable for the people who allowed their stadium to be built. Your argument about "well, you voted for it" is a bit naive when you think about the way the Yankees and other teams have bullied politicians into subsidizing them, through threats of moving, etc.
On a purely nostalgic note, the baseball fan in me just thinks it's sad that going to a baseball game on a Tuesday night in may is going to set a family of four back several hundred dollars.
David, your response to his claims about the ATE are equally responsive to anyone claiming that baseball owes the public because of the ATE. Given that the NFL, et al are so successful without the ATE, it seems silly to me that taxpayers are demanding concessions for something that's functionally worthless to baseball. It was important in centralizing baseball, but it's probably not important anymore.
It's also true that the Yankees HAVE set aside some seats that are affordable. They don't offer as much multi-season flexibility as they used to, and the quality of the affordable seats is lower, but what do you want them to do? Make field-level boxes cheap? That'd be great, but you still wouldn't be able to get them, since they'd disappear incredibly quickly...thus justifying the price increases.
I'd also be fairly surprised if you could list a bunch of internet businesses (other than software companies, maybe) that are infrastructure independent. Even if they only receive ad revenue, surely their advertisers sell a tangible product that has to be shipped, etc.
Of course the Yankees bully politicians by threatening to move...I don't see how this is different than 90% of major companies in the US. Gateway headquartered in South Dakota instead of Iowa back in the 90's because of favorable tax incentives that they could bully out of SD politicians. In order to justify the public outrage at how the Yankees are behaving you need to differentiate them somehow from the businesses that most of us go to work at...and really, there isn't a difference at all, except that most of us don't get so attached to our favorite shipping company or brand of milk.
Oh I don't know if it's that hard. itunes? Baseball Prospectus? google? yahoo? facebook? (I know the last two hardly qualify as "businesses" but they generate profits, right?)
Shipping product isn't necessarily taxpayer-dependent, as the US Postal Service is not taxpayer-funded.
And if the anti-trust exemption is so unnecessary, why do baseball owners fight tooth-and-nail to preserve it whenever it's threatened?
Shipping anything is taxpayer-dependent because roads are taxpayer funded.
Google, facebook, yahoo all make money exclusively (or almost) on advertising revenue -- I'm not paying for my gmail or the search engine. And I'm willing to bet that most of their advertisers are dependent on infrastructure, therefore making all of those businesses indirectly dependent on infrastructure also.
Baseball owners fight tooth and nail to protect the ATE because it doesn't cost them anything to do it -- all they have to do is go talk to Congress, so they might as well. Either way, you can't make the argument that baseball would function in exactly the same way without the ATE but that it's somehow valuable to the league...those are two mutually exclusive statements.
But isn't the argument you're making also mutually exclusive: That baseball needs the ATE to insure they have the best players, but that the ATE is also something you claim is "functionally worthless" and "probably not important anymore"? Which is it? I would tend to think that upon appearance it seems worthless, but smart businessmen rarely hire the best attorneys available to defend something "worthless," right?
I understand this is an argument about parsing silly things, but the infrastructure investment that created a road, that millions of people use, daily, for all sorts of purposes, is entirely different from an infrastructure investment of building a stadium, which provides a small group (a baseball team's owners) massive profit while being used by a relatively tiny minority of the population.
For example, I would guess that the Yankees 2009 attendance will be around 3-4 million. I can't even begin to figure the math for how many individual users that is - maybe 2.5-3 million, if we're being generous? And yet the population of the NY-NJ metro area is something like 19 million people. The population of NYC alone is 9 million people. The population of the state of New York is 20 million.
I'm not sure which segment of taxpayers paid for this stadium - city, state, metro area or some combo of all three, but when literally 300 percent more people are paying for the stadium than are actually attending the games, that's a reason for pause. Why shouldn't those who pay for the stadium get some kind of perk?
First, it was you who brought up the roads thing, not me. You cited the taxpayer money tied up on infrastructure and manpower; my whole point was that those things benefit pretty much everyone, so it's tough for you to hold that over the Yankees' heads.
As for the ATE, you may be misinterpreting it's significance somewhat. To begin with, it is not a traditional noncompete; it doesn't guarantee MLB's monopoly. If I wanted to go start the XLB, the ATE would not prevent me from doing so or even from signing away MLB players. However, absent the ATE, I could found the XLB and subsequently sue the MLB under the Sherman Antitrust Act, claiming that MLB was a monopoly. The courts would then have the right to forcibly break up the MLB into multiple leagues, to ensure competition.
I think it's safe to say such a result would be catastrophic for baseball, for fans and owners alike. That's why the owners fight so hard to keep the ATE. In fact, the scenario outlined above is a very similar circumstance to the one that actually earned the ATE in the first place: in 1922, the last team standing in the dying Federal League sued on the grounds that MLB was a monopoly (fortunately, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes ruled that baseball was an "exhibition" and thus the monopoly did not jeopardize "interstate commerce" as stipulated by the Sherman Antitrust Act). Frankly I am not sure how other pro leagues operate without ATEs; perhaps they feel they could rely on the baseball precedent if they were ever sued.
Why shouldn't they get some kind of perk? Because it's a ridiculous assertion that cheap(er) tickets are a perk for most of the population. As you yourself stated, there are maybe 2.5-3 million people who go to see Yankees games every year. Of those, probably a significant portion don't live in or pay taxes in NYC given the Yankees regional and national drawing power. Therefore, even if the Yankees were drawing at previous levels, there's STILL 75% of the population paying for the stadium but receiving nothing in return. Your argument isn't one in favor of cheap tickets, it's an argument against publicly funded stadiums...which I think every person who reads BP probably agrees with.
Also, I don't agree with the statement that baseball needs the ATE to get the best players...that's the whole point. The ATE is largely past the point of being extremely valuable, so it's not really reasonable to demand that businesses not profit maximize today because you gave them something 40 years ago.
Silly question bordering on blasphemy, but if you really voted with yoru wallet, doesn't that mean you would've bought Mets tickets instead... or not bought tickets at all?
Buying Mets tickets is an even longer shot given the disappearance of some 12,000 seats (!) in their stadium transition. In our case, the fact that unlike with the Yankees, we don't have any significant track record of purchases and thus no seniority wouldn't help us either.
Here's Neil deMause's report on trying to buy single-game Mets tix: http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/03/mets_tickets_fo.php
Meanwhile, the Yankees continue to find ways to reinforce the caste system among their ticket-buyers: http://newstadiuminsider.blogspot.com/2009/03/final-slap-in-face-to-partial-plan.html
I've found it ironic that I get seats cheaper through scalpers than I do from buying directly from the club, especially when convenience fees and e-ticket or print-ticket fees are added in.
Granted, I'm in Denver, so maybe the availability is better, but even during the World Series you could find tickets on the street for as much as they were going on StubHub.
The Giants have gotten quite far into their long standing waiting list because of the PSRs. I'm please to say that I was above #15000 and turned down the right to purchase 2 seats that came with $5,000 PSR and a $120 face. $6,200 each year one. $1,000 I probably would have seriously considered.
I wish more of you Yankee fans who felt abused didn't run back to the team the first time they came calling. Oh well. Fans could take professional sports back, we've just chosen against it to this point.
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Mike Fancesa has bitched about this problem on YES an even had some Yankee brass on to address the issue.
The bottom line - increased requests for FULL season tickets have taken up the very seats formerly occupied by PARTIAL season ticket holders.
I guess you could argue whether the team should have shown more loyalty to long time PARTIAL season holders than new customers willing to pay a FULL season bill, but most businesses prefer the customer with the most green in their hand.
Fair enough, but that did go against what Yankee COO Lonn Trost said in one of those Francesca interviews (http://www.fieldofschemes.com/news/archives/2009/03/3568_yanks_trost_one_1.html), and it still doesn't mean the Yankees should brazenly attempt to bully their less invested customers into spending more money, which is what they did.
Did you have the opportunity to upgrade to a full season package to keep your tickets? If so why did you turn it down?
Do you really expect the team to find 3 other 20-game patrons to fill those same seats for the rest of the year instead of finding one patron to cover all 80 games?
Try going on-line to buy tickets to even a few games and realize how good you had it. Better yet try to get those tickets from a broker.
I'm trying to figure out why MLB teams aren't charging 3x the prices of tickets. At least they'd get the money instead of the broker or whatever version of Ticketmaster exists now.
Let me get this straight:
You're mystified that we don't come up with a bigger pile of dough to shell out for 81 games, AND you're mystified that it's so difficult and expensive to buy single-game tickets?
Then I suppose it also stands to reason that you're mystified as to why we chose to occupy the comfortable, affordable middle ground between those two extremes for the past 11 years.