Comments on: A secondary ticket market correction

By: MoveBack

MoveBack — Thu, 07 May 2009 00:51:55 +0000

This is nothing new. What is new is , now that StubHub is official, people trust it more and its got exposure. Last year,the “Final Season” that everyone compares this year to, I got tier reserves reguarly for under $10. Now, you won’t get the Sox or Mets or weekends in July-August but if you want to see a game cheap, you were able to.

Pre-stubhub this was the case as well. The difference was you had to go to the Stadium. On a night like this in May, I would just hang around the ticket booths at Gate 4, and always someone walking in with extras would sell be a couple for $10 or $20. A couple times people would just hand me seats on sold out $5 ticket nights because friends didn;t show up. You just had to look like a fan, not a scalper (I wasn’t I went to the games)

Of course, pre internet the other trick was to have a beer in the bowling alley, wait until the second inning, and you hasd scalpers unloading seats left and right.

By: Jesse

Jesse — Mon, 04 May 2009 15:15:42 +0000

So let me see if I’ve got this straight: People buy into this “I won’t be able to get tickets” panic, and buy full-season packages they don’t actually want, which forces me out of the package I wanted and into a smaller package with crappy seats at the top of the granstand. And now they’re having trouble selling the tickets I actually wanted to buy in a package?

Am I now supposed to feel bad that they don’t know the first thing about being a de facto ticket broker, which means I’m now getting their tickets for below face value to supplement my plan?

‘Cause I really don’t.

By: Ico-Jones

Ico-Jones — Mon, 04 May 2009 02:15:23 +0000

People have short memories. Tickets for games before Memorial Day are always relatively plentiful. All the factors mentioned above may have exacerbated it a bit, but I won’t believe there is a real issue until weekend games in June and July are below face.

By: Edwantsacracker

Edwantsacracker — Sun, 03 May 2009 23:53:38 +0000

The team also pressured season ticket holders into buying larger packages. For example the team told my family that the Sunday Game package wasn’t available and if we wanted tickets we needed to take a 17 game pack. We figured we could go to the games we wanted and sell the rest. So did everyone else.

By: Beamish

Beamish — Sun, 03 May 2009 22:05:36 +0000

It is all about Opening Day. People like me who had the Plan C (Sundays)for a dozen years were used to getting Opening Day in the package, now suddenly this year the only way to guarantee an Opening Day seat was to buy the 81- or 41-game package. My buddy and I seriously considered it – but ultimately did not want to be stuck trying to sell 30 games worth of tickets.

Apparently too many fools placed far too much emphasis on Opening Day and now they are stuck trying to unload seats into a crashed economic market.

I enjoyed just a bit of schadenfreude watching the mess that was the Opening Day game and realizing how many people had effectively spent $2000 for Grandstand seats (or more for Main or Field seats) just to be there for what was a disastrous game.

By: Bill N.

Bill N. — Sun, 03 May 2009 20:23:18 +0000

I wish I could find cheaper tickets. I can’t find anything that is atleast 50 bucks over face value. If anyone has tickets for the Phils/Yanks game on the 23rd I would be willing to buy them.

By: Yankeegirl49

Yankeegirl49 — Sun, 03 May 2009 17:03:52 +0000

My friend sold 2 bleacher seats ($12 face) for tomorrows game for $150. Nice profit there, but again, thats a premium game. The few other games she can’t get to she sells for face.

By: leokitty

leokitty — Sun, 03 May 2009 16:19:39 +0000

Well when a bunch of people upgrade to full season out of fear when they only want to go to Saturday or Sunday games/etc, it’s not surprising a huge secondary market like that comes into being.

What I think is interesting is that the below face prices extend to the Grandstand.

By: Ian

Ian — Sun, 03 May 2009 16:16:19 +0000

I believe this phenomenon is happening because of how the Yankees handled their stadium relocation program. A lot of partial plans were downgraded from Weekend to Weekday or to a lesser seating section.

I had a Sunday plan in the Tier Reserves the past five seasons, but was assigned a Weekday plan for 2009. I have a friend who had a Friday plan in the tier and was assigned a Friday plan in the bleachers.

Why? Because the Yankees priority was full season tickets. The Yankees allowed former partial plan holders to upgrade to full season BEFORE incumbent partial holders could get new partial plans.

Who are these new season ticket holders? Let’s categorize them:
1. Longtime fans who want to go to every game.
2. Longtime fans who feared that if they didn’t upgrade to the full season, they would miss out games they went to in the past (The Sunday plan previously included Opening Day. Not anymore. It used to also have Old Timers Day, which was on a Saturday, but its now a Sunday game). They could then sell their unused tickets on StubHub to the highest bidder to make up the additional cost.
3. Scalpers, ticket brokers, and those who are only in it to flip for profit.

If the Yankees had only assigned partial plans before allowing upgrades to full season, the tickets would be in the hands of more people who actually wanted tickets to attend games, and not to sell them on StubHub.

However, the Yankees probably don’t care. Those tickets have been sold, and can’t be returned. Additionally, StubHub is the official ticket reseller of the Yankees (and every other MLB club except the Red Sox). The Yankees get a commission for every ticket resold on Stubhub. Therefore, when a $20 Grandstand ticket sells on StubHub for $10, the total revenue collected is $30. If that ticket was in the hands of a fan who actually wanted to go to the game in the first place, the Yankees would not have collected that extra money.

The entire Grandstand and Bleachers (every ticket with a game day face value of $30 or less) have been sold out for the 2009 season. Those who bought season tickets to resell are losing money. Reselling the premium games at a premium isn’t going to get them to break even.

My prediction is the way this market to adjust is for a big percentage of new 2009 full season ticket holders not to renew in 2010.

By: Ross

Ross — Sun, 03 May 2009 15:53:08 +0000

I was predicting this for months. It finally happened. Still, my father sold a pair of tickets in the Grandstand for the Boston game tomorrow night for $110 and the face value is $40. Premium games are fine.