Are The Yankees Taking Our Advice And Peddling Excess Ticket Inventory On Stubhub?

Courtesy of ticketnews.com (via Shyster Ball) comes an interesting article about the sudden increase in Yankee Stadium premium ticket offerings available on StubHub. The speculation is that the Yankees are selling their own tickets on Stubhub and receiving pennies on the dollar - just to get some butts in the seats.

StubHub, for their part is taking the "deny 'til we die" approach, claiming that it is due to the freebies that the Yankees are handing out as part of their price reduction program They were also quick to note that they do not share personal information about sellers - meaning it could be anyone, including the Yankees. Even if it was within StubHub's power to divulge this information, they wouldn't, since it would probably get the Yankees' official ticket partner - Ticketmaster - pretty heated.

We here at NSI aren't surprised in the least by this accusation by ticketnews.com. As a matter of fact, we suggested a very similar idea just weeks ago:

If we were the Yankees, we would dump the tickets at wholesale costs (read: discounted) to a mega-broker that sells their tickets on Stub Hub. The onus would then be on the broker to move the now considerably cheaper inventory, and the Yankees would get kickbacks on the Stub Hub commission. Obviously, this will never happen.

Finally, the Yankees have listened to us and have made a smart move. Sure, this screws over the people who paid full price for those seats. However, at this point the most important job of the Yankees is to fill up their stadium - if only to ease the embarrassment of their blatant miscalculation of the premium ticket market.

Selling these seats on StubHub offers the Yankees free market research to evaluate the appropriate prices for their premium ticket offerings. Selling on StubHub also gives them the opportunity to adjust prices in real time based on the current market. Obviouisly, the Yankees would need to go through some intermediary to do this, and/or alert StubHub to this practice, since they are receiving kickbacks from all sales on Stubhub.com.

This is still all idle speculation, since the Yankees media spokespeople and Ticketmaster aren't responding to inquiries. Could this be the way the Yankees sell their tickets going forward? Would this be more fair to all parties involved? Let us know what you think in the comments section.