Yankees to drop StubHub, nearing deal with Ticketmaster
Originally published: December 10, 2012 9:06 PM
Updated: December 10, 2012 10:53 PM
By STEVEN MARCUS steven.marcus@newsday.com
Photo credit: Jim McIsaac | Empty seats are seen in the seventh inning of Game 2 of the American League Championship Series between the New York Yankees and the Detroit Tigers at Yankee Stadium. (Oct. 14, 2012)
The Yankees are opting out of a five-year renewal between MLB and StubHub, an online service for buying and selling tickets, a person familiar with the development said Monday. The Angels and Cubs also will not participate, StubHub said.
The Yankees are completing a deal with Ticketmaster that will, the source said, “be much more fan-friendly, have less fees and more accessibility.” Ticketmaster spokeswoman Jacqueline Peterson declined comment.
The Yankees believe the prices of their tickets on StubHub often are too far below the printed face value.
StubHub spokesman Glen Lehrman said: “People are entitled to their opinion in terms of what they want to see the market price of their tickets. We can’t control what the market is for Yankees tickets. We’re a marketplace. People can list them for whatever they want.”
Lehrman said the Yankees’ departure will have a “pretty negligible” effect on the company’s business and will not significantly affect the fans’ access to reduced-price tickets. Private sellers still will be able to sell their Yankees tickets on StubHub.
“All it means is that we won’t have an electronic integration with the Yankees,” Lehrman said. “As part of our deal with Major League Baseball, it essentially allowed a [team] to type in their bar code directly into the StubHub system and it would populate a ticket information so the buyer could instantly download their ticket. [Now] the person who is selling the ticket will either FedEx it or upload an electronic file that the person can download.”
I am still trying to figure out exactly what the reason is for the Yankees doing this. If you could get close enough to Randy Levine, you would smell the BS pouring from his mouth. He is one of the many individuals who should not be running the Yankees. Why should the Yankees care how much tickets are sold after the Yankees have made money already on the tickets? It has to be this: if you can buy tickets cheap on StubHub, with the exception of the World Series, why would you keep your Season Ticket Plan. I have already thought about dropping mine for 2014, for this reason. Now the Yankees are dealing with Ticketmaster, the most reprehensible monopoly that exists. I am sure everyone of you has a Ticketmaster story. Since Hal took over, I am liking the Yankees management less and less. We will see what happens. If the Yankees are operating on the “cheap” as far as fixing what it is wrong, they should drop ticket prices. But they won’t. This is one reason there are so many empty seats. This season, there might be another reason for empty seats. EDB
SD Yankee Report 