The Yankees Have An Ongoing Public Relations Problem
Yankees telecasts bare the soul of the franchise in a way that is depressing and demoralizing for the average fan who want to attend a game. Because when you tune into a game, you are usually met with a sea of empty seats, that YES can’t escape unless they get rid of that centerfield camera, and similar prices for those seats that most of us cannot afford. But maybe there is an answer that can satisfy everyone.
The Yankees will sell you a ticket in the nosebleed seats for virtually any game you want to attend. But if you want a “really good” seat, forget it because you have no choice but to enter the lecherous market of the resellers.
And I get it; the Yankees simply don’t want to be bothered with re-selling tickets which means matching up buyers and sellers, arranging for the collection and redistribution of the monies from the sale, dealing with refunds and rainouts, and god knows what else.
And sub-contracting is the only way to do business these days, and I get that too. But what I don’t understand is why the Yankees continue to allow their brand to be blemished by the wake left behind when Opening Day tickets are selling for $400 to $2,175 on, resellers like Vivid.
I could be wrong, but here’s what I imagine the situation to be. You have, for example, a stockbroker who takes 5% of his Christmas bonus to purchases four prime Legends seats for the 2017 season. He’s not particularly a fan of the Yankees, much less one of baseball. But he sees an opportunity to impress his clients by giving them tickets to games when they are in town. Except they are seldom in town because they are too busy making, even more, money than this guy does in another part of the country.
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So, over the course of 81 home games he might attend 8-10 games himself, fashionably arriving in the fourth inning, and maybe he gives out tickets to his fellow workers for a few games, and maybe he impresses the girls he meets at the NYC bars he frequents and passes a few out there as well. You get the picture. He’s sitting on a load of tickets he cannot use.
Enter the Yankees authorized reseller of tickets, Stubhub (and no I won’t link them). And when that happens, it’s virtually game over for you and me when prices rise for prime seats to more than many make in a week.
Yankees: Here’s A Possible Solution
But why can’t the Yankees spearhead something like this as a way to make everyone happy. Why not establish a cap on the actual purchase price of a ticket from a reseller, say $250 for any and all tickets sold in this manner. And then, require the seller to make a contribution to a Yankees charity for the balance of that $250 and the “market value” of the resold ticket.
The stockbroker gets a tax deduction, and StubHub gets the fee they usually would have charged, the Yankees get a huge PR bump, and you and I get a chance to sit in a prime seat for a game at Yankee Stadium (with all the privileges that come with that seat) for a reasonable cost.
Obviously, the $250 number I threw out there is arbitrary and subject to refinement. For me, that’s still a good chunk of money to spend, and for others, it could still be a killer and therefore no help. The choice of the charity is another thing that would need to be worked out. But you have to start somewhere.
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The Yankees don’t look good when you see all those empty seats behind home plate, in particular on a Friday (date) night and Saturday afternoon family time) game. The brand is damaged, and no one wants that. It’s an idea; that’s all. And behind the scenes, the Yankees should have already recognized the problem and working with ideas about solving it. Because whether they like it or not, it’s being noticed.
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