Let them eat cake, MLB style

[SpacemanSpiff]

Heard about this story overnight. It seems that the NY Yankees is making it harder for outside third-party ticket resellers in general (and StubHub in particular) to do so.

Now, there is an official reseller with Ticketmaster. However, the Yankees require a "floor" on any ticket transactions. So, if you have tickets to, say, the Yanks playing Oakland on a Wednesday night and you want to dump it at any price, you can't. StubHub doesn't have such a restriction.

What the Yankees are doing is disallowing print-at-home tickets (from PDFs), saying it is a fraud risk. They will allow tickets to be on smart phones. Except you can only get those tickets through Ticketmaster, and there is no way to move it to any other seller's platform.

What gets interesting is what Lonn Trost, the COO of the Yankees, has said about the reseller issue:

"The problem below market at a certain point is that if you buy a ticket in a very premium location and pay a substantial amount of money,” Trost said on WFAN Thursday morning. “It’s not that we don’t want that fan to sell it, but that fan is sitting there having paid a substantial amount of money for a ticket and (another) fan picks it up for a buck-and-a-half and sits there, and it’s frustrating to the purchaser of the full amount.

“And quite frankly,” he added, “the fan may be someone who has never sat in a premium location. So that’s a frustration to our existing fan base."

Uh huh.

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseb ... -1.2536858

[littlebeast13]

Heard about this story overnight. It seems that the NY Yankees is making it harder for outside third-party ticket resellers in general (and StubHub in particular) to do so.

Now, there is an official reseller with Ticketmaster. However, the Yankees require a "floor" on any ticket transactions. So, if you have tickets to, say, the Yanks playing Oakland on a Wednesday night and you want to dump it at any price, you can't. StubHub doesn't have such a restriction.

What the Yankees are doing is disallowing print-at-home tickets (from PDFs), saying it is a fraud risk. They will allow tickets to be on smart phones. Except you can only get those tickets through Ticketmaster, and there is no way to move it to any other seller's platform.

What gets interesting is what Lonn Trost, the COO of the Yankees, has said about the reseller issue:

"The problem below market at a certain point is that if you buy a ticket in a very premium location and pay a substantial amount of money,” Trost said on WFAN Thursday morning. “It’s not that we don’t want that fan to sell it, but that fan is sitting there having paid a substantial amount of money for a ticket and (another) fan picks it up for a buck-and-a-half and sits there, and it’s frustrating to the purchaser of the full amount.

“And quite frankly,” he added, “the fan may be someone who has never sat in a premium location. So that’s a frustration to our existing fan base."

Uh huh.

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseb ... -1.2536858

Whew! Just when the baseball world thought it was no longer cool to hate the Yankees, they remind us they're still the original Evil Empire after all! King George would be proud...

lb13

[Jeemie]

Heard about this story overnight. It seems that the NY Yankees is making it harder for outside third-party ticket resellers in general (and StubHub in particular) to do so.

Now, there is an official reseller with Ticketmaster. However, the Yankees require a "floor" on any ticket transactions. So, if you have tickets to, say, the Yanks playing Oakland on a Wednesday night and you want to dump it at any price, you can't. StubHub doesn't have such a restriction.

What the Yankees are doing is disallowing print-at-home tickets (from PDFs), saying it is a fraud risk. They will allow tickets to be on smart phones. Except you can only get those tickets through Ticketmaster, and there is no way to move it to any other seller's platform.

What gets interesting is what Lonn Trost, the COO of the Yankees, has said about the reseller issue:

"The problem below market at a certain point is that if you buy a ticket in a very premium location and pay a substantial amount of money,” Trost said on WFAN Thursday morning. “It’s not that we don’t want that fan to sell it, but that fan is sitting there having paid a substantial amount of money for a ticket and (another) fan picks it up for a buck-and-a-half and sits there, and it’s frustrating to the purchaser of the full amount.

“And quite frankly,” he added, “the fan may be someone who has never sat in a premium location. So that’s a frustration to our existing fan base."

Uh huh.

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseb ... -1.2536858

I know on those rare occasions I sat in premium stadium seating, the first thing I did was ask every other fan there what they paid for their tickets.

On second thought, since I'd BE one of those fans who paid diddly squat to sit in a premium location...gee, I hope no one ever asks me!

[SpacemanSpiff]

I know on those rare occasions I sat in premium stadium seating, the first thing I did was ask every other fan there what they paid for their tickets.

On second thought, since I'd BE one of those fans who paid diddly squat to sit in a premium location...gee, I hope no one ever asks me!

That also applies to traveling. It's considered a faux pas to ask those in an airplane with you how much they paid for their tickets. It can start some heated arguments, and since you're stuck in a tin can for a few hours with these folks and no place else to go.... you get the idea.

[BackInTex]

sounds like someone has consulted wit Bernie Sanders on their business model.

[Jeemie]

sounds like someone has consulted wit Bernie Sanders on their business model.

I'm not following this connection at all...

[SpacemanSpiff]

Bringing this one up from a few months ago, because it's suddenly become, well, humorous.

HBO host and comic John Oliver managed to score four premium seats at the first three Yankees home games. He sold the tix for a quarter apiece, with the condition that the purchasers had to dress as if they'd never been in such seats before.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-l ... 41085.html

These seats are right behind home plate (meaning it's going to be seen on the broadcasts). The first night had a group dressed as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Last night had two dresses as unicorns, and two dressed as Left Shark and Right Shark (from Katy Perry's Super Bowl routine last year; no word on if Left Shark's choreography has improved).

I would like to have seen how much steam came out of Lonn Trost's ears upon seeing these.

[BackInTex]

sounds like someone has consulted wit Bernie Sanders on their business model.

I'm not following this connection at all...

Really?

Completely non-market based fixed pricing to ensure everyone pays the same price regardless of demand or real value? You don't see the connection?

[T_Bone0806]

Whew! Just when the baseball world thought it was no longer cool to hate the Yankees, they remind us they're still the original Evil Empire after all! King George would be proud...

lb13

Trost is an asshat. So is another member of the "braintrust", Randy Levine. Believe me, there is no shortage of die-hard Yankee fans who loathe Trost. And it pisses us off that they'll trumpet big attendance figures on air when the cameras are showing plenty of empty seats in the millionaires' sections. It's been an issue ever since the new stadium opened and they started courting the Biff and Muffy brigade rather than the meat and potatoes, longtime devotees. The big spenders only show up when it's trendy to do so, a big game. And when they do, they're usually on their cell phones anyway. As a result, the crowds just don't have the same thunder that they did at the old stadium. Sometimes it sounds more like a golf game than a baseball game.