Why are these men smiling?
I was going to do a Squawk last night about the New York Yankees finally coming to terms with StubHub. The Yankees Ticket Exchange is no more, and StubHub will be taking over as the official secondary market for Yankees tickets. But I wanted to make sure I heard the full terms of the deal before getting excited.
It’s a good thing I waited. Not only are print-at-home tickets still banned (I guess that counterfeiting problem that affects the Yankees and not any other team, not even the Mets, is still an issue!) but there is now a price floor on StubHub tickets for the first time ever. Which means that this deal is pretty much a net loss for Yankee fans. Sure, fans will no longer have to schlep out of their way to the StubHub office in Bronx Terminal Market, but they also won’t get as good ticket deals as they have in the past. What a debacle.
Only Yankees president Randy Levine could take a situation that had ticked off so many Yankee fans and cost the team in the pocketbook and make it even worse! How does this guy still have a job? Oh, that’s right. Hal (Rip Van Winkle) Steinbrenner is asleep at the wheel.
I guess the Yankees just assume fans are stupid, and won’t realize the implications of this deal. But since I am extremely cynical, I scoured the press release and knew that this phrase in it, about how StubHub would “adhere to the Yankees advertising resale price policy,” would be trouble. So I reached out on Twitter to Team StubHub and to Scott Cutler, the president of StubHub, resulting in this exchange:
Me: what does “adhere to the Yankees advertising resale price policy” mean. Is there a minimum price floor?
StubHub: Hi! Fans will be able to list tix at price point no less than 50% of lowest advertised price. (1/2)
StubHub: That number will be determined based on the lowest price season tix that were sold in a given section. (2/2)
Me: So how does this benefit Yankee fans, exactly? No print-at-home tix and higher prices is a net loss for us!
StubHub: There will be a dedicated window @ stadium to help customers who don’t have mobile. More info coming mid-July.
Me: Is it lowest advertised price or lowest season ticket price? I’ve seen the latter reported elsewhere.
StubHub: That number will be determined based on the lowest price season ticket that were sold in a given section.
My friend Bob, who is a ticket broker, warned me last night that this deal might have a ticket floor. He wrote me on Facebook: “My guess is there will be a minimum price as part of the agreement.” To which I responded: “If they do the minimum price, they’ll be cutting off their nose to spite their face. I know that even the Ticket Exchange was selling tix below face value. And attendance is way down.”
Turns out Bob was right. There is, indeed, an unprecedented minimum price with StubHub — tickets cannot go for less than 50% of the lowest season ticket price for that section. So much for the free market.
I also wonder what New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman will have to say about this ticket floor situation, given that he has sharply criticized the NFL for doing so, saying that these minimum prices hurt the customer.
The only positive from this deal is that I also learned from StubHub that “there will be a dedicated window @ stadium to help customers who don’t have mobile. More info coming mid-July.” Which is what the Yankees should have done in April, instead of having these massive lines when people don’t have mobile tickets.
It’s funny. As I’ve said before, the Yankees are all for the free market when it suits them. You know — no salary cap, high prices on concessions, etc. But the one time where they may lose out on making money — on tickets they already sold in the first place! — all of a sudden they want protection from the free market. Funny how that works.
Given how uninspiring and boring these Yankee team is this season, you would think they would do something good for the fans. This deal is the opposite. Fans’ options on the secondary market just got a lot worse, and without even a ticket office to walk to.
If the team had brought back the print-at-home option, and let StubHub do their thing without price floors, I would be happy to applaud this deal. But since Levine is a self-righteous jerk who thinks his way is the right way, we got this awful plan instead. What a nightmare.
The Yankees are lucky that loyal fans like me stick with their team for life. Because every day, people like Randy Levine and Hal Steinbrenner and Lonn Trost and Brian Cashman drive this franchise into the ground, and screw over loyal fans like me in the process.
