The Yanks are raising ticket prices in the bleachers and some of the pricier areas in 2011.
The New York Yankees are raising the prices of some of their most expensive tickets for next year after making big cuts in 2010, and are hiking the cost of bleacher seats for only the third time in 13 years.
The price of the best field-level seats will rise to $260 as part of season ticket plans, the team said Monday. Those seats cost $250 this year, down from $325 when new Yankee Stadium opened in 2009.
Seats which had been slashed from $325 to $235 will remain unchanged, as will many other seats in the field level. Toward the outfield, tickets that had been $100 will rise to $110, and tickets that had been $75 will go up to $80.
Upper deck prices remain unchanged. Bleacher seats that had been $12 increase to $15, while $5 bleacher seats remain the same.
Image: TIME.COM
my bleacher seats were $8 when I first got my plan, so yeah it kinda sucks. but $15 for that close to the field is still a hell of a deal. I figure I'll be paying an extra $36 this year for my total package (12 games), which of course I'm not loving but in the grand scheme its the one thing I treat myself on and I can't say its prohibitively expensive...not yet at least.
$260 for field level seats! I'll stick with my $35 field level tickets for Yakult Swallows home games at ancient Jingu Stadium. $260, 信じられない！！
Btw, anyone know what good Knicks tickets fo for these days? I imagine people are giving away seats now...D'Antoni is bum, Phil Jax next year please!!
Next year will be my second season in row without attending a game, after attending at least one game in NYC for each of the previous 25 or 30 seasons.
If there is no inflation, why are the Yankees raising ticket prices? Tell the fans they want to increase the budget to $220M to sign Cliff Lee and resign young players, don't spoon feed the world BS. $5 bleacher seats are obstructed view unicorns that exist solely to get listed in news reports written by financial illiterates. It's a free country so I don't really care what the Yankees charge for tickets (if only they paid for their private stadium with private money!), I just wish the press would spare us the stupid when reporting on the prices. Lonn Trost is somehow fighting scalpers by raising ticket prices? Doesn't that shift the profit from the fan to the ballclub? The ability to lock in 4.5% price increases is fairness? We haven't had a year with 4.5% inflation in 20 years. Next thing you know Derek Jeter wins his 5th Gold Glove. It's madness.
I'm just glad reading box scores is still free.
[2] I'm going to stick with my $9 Mud Hens tickets, and if Austin Jackson or Brendan Boesch struggle, I'll get to see them.
[4] The reason they are likely raising prices in targeted areas is because those seats were underpriced. As Trost noted, the tickets in question were the ones selling well above face value in the secondary market, which is an indication that the Yankees set the prices too low.
I can understand why the move would be greeted with a negative reaction, but the "average fan" really isn't the one affected. The people taking the "hit" are the season plan holders who will now see their profit margins reduced. Of course, in such cases, we aren't talking about a burden as much as a reduced benefit.
[6] I understand that there are games when a ticket to a hot game is going to feel like a bargain but I'd rather the Yankees took a little bit of risk on having empty seats and went to a pricing scheme that took into account premium games and dog games as well. The Wednesday night game in May against the Mariners is still near capacity because it's tethered to ticket plans. If you untether those dog games, the market can work for both the Yankees and the fan. Right now it's win/win all the time for the Yankees front office.
There is a danger in that kind of behavior. It erodes the support of your most loyal supporters as you pursue the most affluent. The Yankees weren't always the guaranteed hottest ticket in New York. All it may take is a retired Mariano Rivera (the most freakishly consistent player since Henry Aaron) and face of the franchise Derek Jeter retiring and then will people be so keen on going to Tex and A-Rod age? I love Sabathia but I'm not sure he's a box office draw. Is Robinson Cano a box office star?
Just once I'd like to see a Yankees decision that shows they want their fans to do well too.
[7] I actually think the opposite is true. Because the Mariner game in May is tethered to the ticket plans, it means there are hundreds of people who simply want to dump them. As a result, the secondary market often has those games at a steep discount. I've purchased seats to exactly those kinds of games from StubHub and paid as little as 50% of face value. On the other hand, by not having tiered pricing, premium games don't become prohibitively expensive for the average guy.
As a season plan holder, I have fond the Yankees' policies to be very much aligned with my own interests.