The concept of “face value” for a ticket to a baseball game is often an amorphous one. In our case, the Yankees price out their seats and sell tickets as part of a variety of packages at different place levels. Face value for one seat could be different for the face value of a seat in the same row or section by virtue of the associated season ticket package. By and large, though, face value as set by the Yanks is fairly constant.
Of course, as many fans recognize, face value isn’t the true value of the ticket. Baseball tickets are a finite resource, and only so many exist per game. If the tickets are priced at the right level and the team is good enough, the game will effectively sell out, and then the secondary market takes over. On the secondary market, people who buy tickets with an eye toward making a profit or those who can’t make it to the game are trying to find the true value of their seats.
Over the past few years, it’s been possible to buy many Yankee tickets at or even below face value on the secondary market. Demand isn’t high enough for all but the most sought-after games to warrant a high price, and discerning shoppers know that market value for a mid-week game against, say, the Royals or Orioles isn’t the same as a weekend affair against the Red Sox or Mets. Essentially, those of us who rely on the secondary market to feed our baseball needs have lived with dynamic pricing for years.
Despite innovation on the field, baseball teams have been slow to pick up on this dynamic pricing model. Some teams sell so-called premium games against good teams while others are content to price everything at the same level. That’s beginning to change though. As Kyle Stock wrote in The Daily this weekend, some baseball teams are set to embrace dynamic ticketing. The Brewers, for instance, will change prices on seats if it looks like Zack Greinke will face the Royals while the games in which he doesn’t pitch will see lower prices.
Stock reports on the way dynamic pricing came into being for baseball clubs:
In this case, the guy bucking the system was not a washed-up pro, but rather a 26-year-old fan finishing a Ph.D in economics at the University of Texas. In early 2009, Barry Kahn sneaked into a sports ticketing conference in Las Vegas. Armed with chutzpah and hand-cut business cards, he persuaded the San Francisco Giants to try dynamic pricing in about 2,000 of its worst bleacher seats.
“Basically, we saw that there was a huge price inefficiency here,” Kahn said. “Everyone was saying ‘StubHub is making all this money. How do I get a piece of that?’ My message was: ‘It’s your inventory. You have the ability to get the whole thing.’ ”
By the end of the 2009 season, San Francisco had a 20 percent attendance increase in its test seats and an extra $500,000 in ticket revenue. Three seasons later, Kahn is CEO of Qcue Inc., a profitable Texas-based company that will help 15 baseball teams set their prices this year.
As Stock notes, teams were hesitant to embrace this idea over fears of turning off fans. Some view it as institutional price gouging without realizing that it’s a lesson in Economics 101. Others are more willing to embrace it as it offers up a cheaper way to see more games at the expense of higher prices for the more generally desirable contests.
Here in New York, the Yankees haven’t yet embraced dynamic pricing. It may be slow in coming as the club would have to admit that their pricing models at the expensive new stadium haven’t been as rousing a success as they should have been. But they’ll get here. It’s unavoidable, and it’s a way for the team to tap into more revenue streams. After all, a cheaper ticket could lead to more people would should lead to more concession stands. The money somehow trickles up and into the Yanks’ pocket. For now, though, it’s the next great innovation in the business of baseball and one that should have made its debut years ago.
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