-Digger's Daily-
Embarrassingly visible vacant premium seats at Yankee Stadium created quite a stir for the past couple of weeks. The best seats in the house were mostly unoccupied. Local newspaper photographers jumped all over the chance of snapping shots of empties for publication (NY Daily News Photo above). I had heard unconfirmed rumors of Yankee brass ordering tv cameras to zoom in on players and use best angles to avoid showing vacant seats.
Yanks '09 gate receipts are off. Here's a team paying record salaries, new ballpark, etc and can't sell out. Vastly empty seats are located closest to the field between first and third base. No surprise to anyone outside of management $2,500.00 are a tiny bit overvalued. New York Yankees fans are some of the most loyal in all of sports. Generations of Yankees fans have slept outside over night, stood on hours long lines, braved traffic jams, survived subway derailments, navagated around water main breaks, cut classes, called in sick for work... all to see the Yankees play a baseball game.
How do the Yankees pay their respects (lack of) back to dedicated fans. A billion dollar plus tax payer funded stadium filled with seats only a few can afford. Greedy? Just a bit. Granted, seat prices were set in place when economic times seemed to be thriving and the Yanks were counting on heavy corporate ownership. Therein lies the problem. Times have changed.
The Steinbrenner's finally grew tired of dwindling revenues and decided to slash ticket prices. Remember those $2,500 Legends seats (behind dugouts)? Well, now they're $1,250 per seat. Keep holding out fans... maybe by the All Star break tix will be halved again! Seats along the the right field and left field foul lines are down to $650 from $1,000. Tickets for the Delta SKY 360 Suite overlooking home plate drop from $750 to $550.
What a bargain! They're still nuts! These new tickets prices have been reduced but are still way out of the park for most fans. Yanks are testing the "if you build it, they will come" proverb. Get a grib. Slash them another 65% and maybe they'll fill up. Nowadays, very few people are squandering bucks. Prices of nearly everything are rising. Days of easy come are gone for most. Do you think people will be lining up for $650 to sit near a foul pole vs watching a game on a large flat screen? Not.
I'll keep an ear open for WFAN tomorrow. Loads of listeners will be jamming the phones peppering sportsjockey's with opinions. My 2 cents, pictures of empty seats will remain. Yanks struggle. Management becomes frustrated. First casualty, Girardi. He might want to hold the door open for Cashman. Tick Tock.
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