The Yankees Blame Stub Hub For Poor Attendance

To wit with an example from football:

For years, when Peyton Manning was the QB for the Colts, you couldn't get tickets for less than face value.

With Manning hurt, seat prices dropped. Now with Luck on board, I have a feeling you will see a TON of tickets at Lucas Oil closer to face value or even below.

It's supply and demand. If the Patriots hold Brady out for the last regular season game, you'll see a bunch of tickets come up for sale at less than face. If the Cardinals are out of contention in September, you'll still see the fanbase come out, but you'll also find cheaper tix on StubHub.

I've used the service a lot. Not shabby at all.

 

This is an historic first ... I am in complete agreement with Starman on a business/economic point.

Oh well, the agreement was fun while it lasted. How does StubHub's existence prove these things?

 

Because the Yankees and other clubs secretely offload tickets on StubHub.

 

One of stories I read said that for April and May 66% of tickets bought from The Yankees were resold.

That makes sense in that weather is an issue and many season ticket holders try and dump there seats. I wonder if number drops in the summer.

 

The fact the teams are participating on StubHub at all indicates they are diverting large numbers of tickets to the site on a consignment basis -- essentially, for nothing.

StubHub gets a small cut and the team keeps the rest.

The teams wouldn't do it unless they were getting a huge chunk of the sale price.

 

And let's not forget that the original Yankee pricing scheme was based on pre-crash corporate expense accounts and bubble Wall Street.

 

That and the price that scalpers were getting for tickets in after market. From a period of late '96 till last year of old stadium season ticket holders really benefited. They could double and triple the price they were paying The Yankees by selling in after market to Wall Street types.

One of hopes of the Yankees with new stadium was to turn over their season ticket base to the Wall St clientele that would pay the higher price to The Yankees.

 

Exactly.

Also one of the reasons that aside from the playoffs, that billionaire boy's-night-out seating area within the moat behind home plate is almost never half full.

 

Let's assume that MLB teams are diverting large numbers of heretofore unsold tickets to StubHub and, ultimately, selling them for whatever they can get. How is that fraudulent? It might suck if you, as a fan, bought tickets from the team at face value when they could have been cheaper elsewhere. But it also sucks when you paid $18K for a car and you found out someone else got the same car for $16.5K, or when you paid $380 for a round-trip airfare that someone else got for $330. Surely you'd agree that MLB teams would rather sell tickets at face value than at a discount on StubHub.

Unless we are talking about hot, hot teams for whom fans are packing the stands night in and night out (when tickets would go above face value), there's not much of an upside for a team to put much ticket inventory out on StubHub. I guess I don't see the fraud.

 

Do we know this to be true?

I mean, the evidence looks pretty strong. If the same seats are always available, it's reasonable to assume it migh be the team themselves selling them.

And, it wouldn't be much different than hotels and airlines using Hotwire or Priceline. Those seats are worth $0.00 once the game has been played, so it's in the teams interests to get as much revenue as they can for them.

But, full priced customers do not appreciate it when the guy sitting next to them paid half as much as they did. And, as far as I know, no team has admitted to doing this.

Is there a way to find out? It would make a good investigative report -- especially if a team like the Yankees was doing it, while badmouthing them at the same time.

 

Concert tickets are dumped by the tens of thousands straight onto the ticket resale sites.

The last Springsteen tour, it was very common for tickets to go on sale at 10:00:00 ET, and at 10:00:02, a sign comes up saying "no tickets available" and redirecting you to the ticket resale site, where tons of tickets were available at wildly jacked-up prices..

The arena operators (usually NBA or NHL franchises) are getting a huge cut of the wildly inflated prices.

 

As much as airlines drive people crazy, teams might be best off adopting the kind of dynamic/variable pricing that airlines employ to fill as many seats as possible, while extracting as much revenue as possible.

The problem would be how to price season tickets and other ticket plans.

Maybe if teams hit a certain threshold, season ticket holders get some kind of credit towards the next year's purchase.