February 26, 2009

Yanks exec: Yes, we have no seats

New York Yankees COO Lonn Trost was on WFAN radio yesterday to discuss the growing uproar over fans being displaced from their accustomed seating sections in the team's new $1.3 billion ballpark. Trost's defense: They can't offer fans better seats because, well, they didn't build them. The new stadium has a capacity of 52,325 (down from just under 57,000 in the old place), says Trost, but those aren't all seats: 1,886 are standing room, meaning only 50,439 actual fannies can be accommodated. Add in 600 seats in the bleachers that will be have obstructed views (and bear a $5 price tag), and available seats in the new stadium are down about 14% from what Yankee fans have grown used to. "We can't create inventory when it doesn't exist," said Trost.

Of course, "We don't have enough seats" may not be the best defense when it was the Yankees, after all, who designed and built the place, but there you have it. (The Mets, it's worth noting, were even more aggressive in creating artificial scarcity at their new home, slashing about 25% of their seating capacity at Citi Field.) Other Trost bon mots:

• He said that seats behind the foul poles are "really not an obstructed seat," but that regardless, they won't be offered as part of multigame ticket plans, only on a day-of-game basis. (They'll still charge full price for them, though, meaning $85 for seats in the right-field corner was not a typo.) Given Jay Jaffe's experience, this means that Trost is either lying or misinformed.
• "Ninety percent of the non-premium seats are $100 or less," reported Trost, defending the new stadium's affordability. Of course, what's considered a "premium" seat is entirely determined by the Yankees, so this is a fairly bogus statistic; moreover, this means that even by the team's math, several thousand seats are considered "non-premium" and yet are still priced at more than $100 a pop. Maybe you have to bring your own cupholders.