March 24, 2008

Yanks, Mets look to cash in on seats coming and going

The New York Yankees released some ticket prices for their new stadium opening in 2009, and to say the best seats are gold-plated would be an understatement: Front-row seats, now redubbed "Legends Suites," will go for a staggering $2,500 a pop - meaning a full season ticket will set you back a mere $202,500. (Similar seats at Yankee Stadium go for $1,000 apiece.) For the less well-heeled, seats in the back of the Legends section will be buyable for a mere $500 each.

As for the cheap seats, Yanks COO Lonn Trost said that of the stadium's "nonpremium" seats - i.e., not counting the 4,000 or so reserved for high rollers - 88% will be priced at less than $100, and 55% at less than $45. (If you're thinking what I'm thinking, this means expect a heck of a lot of $44 seats.) He added that, as the New York Times put it, the most expensive nonpremium box seats "would not cost significantly more in the new stadium and would not be priced nearly as high as the cheapest Legends seat. But they could be farther back to accommodate the Legends seats." In other words: "Don't worry, box seat holders, your ticket prices aren't going up - we've just redefined 'box seat' to mean the back row."

That was yesterday's news. Today, in an "exclusive" front-page report, the New York Post says that both the Yankees and the Mets are in negotiations to buy the remains of Yankee and Shea Stadiums to sell them as souvenirs. One memorabilia expert estimated that for Yankee Stadium "I doubt we'd have any trouble selling every seat in the house for as much as $1,000," which even discounting the bleachers (which are bench seats) and the typical one seat in three that gets destroyed in removing the rest could bring in $30 million, though in past auctions removal costs have eaten up a huge chunk of the take.

In any case, most of this isn't news - the city has included an estimate of $10 million in revenue from selling bits of Yankee Stadium in its financial plan for at least two years now. The only real revelation is how it plans to do the sale - it might actually make sense to cut the teams in on the process, since they can market to fans better than the city Parks Department (which owns the two ballparks) can. Of course, it all depends on what deal is struck; if, say, the teams don't end up making all the money and the city, say, pays the removal costs, then we'll need to update the subsidy chart yet again.