Looking to visit Yankee Stadium one final time? Be aware, its NOT a buyer's market!

As most of the regular readers of this site know, I am a New York Yankees season ticket holder. Regrettably, I had to sell my season strip this year (FOR FACE VALUE) in order to save up for 2009 season tickets in the new Stadium.

So, here it is, July 28, and the current Yankee Stadium is down to 20-something games left in its fabled history. Unfortunately for prospective ticket buyers, that means demand is skyrocketing and prices are going with it.

I have been keeping track of the Yankee ticket market on sites like Craigs List and Stubhub for the past few years. Typically, during the dog days of summer, tickets to games against the last place team on weeknights were easy to come by. Not only that, the tickets were usually below face value if you waited long enough to purchase them and played your cards right.

I'm here to sadly report that those days are long gone. Now, the Yankees "for sale" ads on Craigs List are outnumbered by "wanted" ads - and the wanted ads are being placed by people willing to pay above face value.

Myself and fake Ian Kennedy wanted to go to a game this week, but neither of us are in a position to pay an arm and a leg for more excruciating encounters with "the typical Yankee fan", of which I have chronicled on this site ad nauseam.

For the working class Yankee fan, this is a sad time. Gone are the days of making a spur of the moment decision during an especially tedious work day to catch a cheap game in the Bronx. Gone are the days of hitting up Craigs List last minute for a pair of Tier Reserved tickets for under $20, buying a sandwich from Subway and sneaking a pre-mixed bottle of rum and coke into the stadium.

There is no telling if those simpler times will return once the hype of the new Stadium wears off. However, with the price tag approaching 1.3 billion for the new digs, my magic 8-ball does not paint a pretty picture.

Talk about it in the NYYSI Forums! Read the full post, after the jump

Yankee ticket prices - the rise is exponential

This interesting piece on msgnetwork.com talks about MSNBC anchor (and huge sports fan) Keith Olberman's tough decision on whether or not to renew his Yankee season tickets.

Everything they are talking about applies to the best seats in the house, but believe me when I tell you that there is plenty of a trickle down for us average folk in the cheap seats:

Olbermann remembered back to 1972, when four seats for the season wound up costing $1,056 (there were 15 doubleheaders). Now the seats - so close to the field that his mother got hit by a ball when Chuck Knoblauch overthrew first base eight years ago - cost him $81,000.

"From $1,000 a season, it's $1,000 a game," he said. "So literally they've now crossed that mark where it's 81 times more expensive to see the season as it was in 1972."

According to the Consumer Price Index, $4 in 1972 is about $20 now - meaning even when adjusted for inflation, there's been a 12-fold increase for the best box seats.

To break it down a little more clearly, check out this chart of the most expensive tickets in Yankee Stadium since 1967.

Just think - all of this and the new stadium doesn't even open until next year.

Time to get a second job!

Talk about it in the NYYSI Forums! Read the full post, after the jump

Looking to buy 2008 Yankees Tickets? Don't know where to start?

Since tickets are OFFICIALLY going on sale next Friday, February 29, I thought I would share some information about the best value seats in the stadium, where to get tickets once ticketmaster.com is sold out of the seats you want, etc.

First off, there are some great deals to be had directly from the Yankees:

click here to read about some great specials such as $5 ticket nights, buy one get one free Yankee tickets and more.

While other people are scrambling (in vain) to get tickets to the premium games, you can be cleaning up on the value tickets and getting WAY more bang for your buck. I won't delve too much more into those Yankee specials, but I highly recommend clicking the link about and familiarizing yourself with all of those offers and seeing which ones apply to you. You won't be getting good seats for $5, but you will be getting into the stadium. Moving into better seats than you purchased is MUCH harder than it was in the 80's and early 90's for obvious reasons, and I don't recommend sitting in other people's seats. However, once you are in the Stadium, the opportunity is always there for you to throw a few bucks at a security guard, or simply scout out some better seats in the early innings that are left vacant and head on over. Remember, that advice is all off the record and can result in ejection from the stadium, so proceed with caution.

Now you probably want to know where to sit in the stadium. Below is the ticket chart directly from Yankees.com:




The fact remains that anything between the bases are the best seats. It goes without saying that behind the plate is the best view. Sections 1-6 in Tier Reserved are amazing seats and I'd consider them better than field level main reserved seats toward the outfield. Being closer to the action isn't always better. Some of the seats downstairs are pointed in the most ridiculous directions - I often wonder what they were thinking when they were building this stadium. I truly believe that upper deck seats are the way to go unless you are sitting between sections 1-10 on the field level. Otherwise, you will have a better experience upstairs even in sections up to and including section 18.

You will see that most of these behind the plate type of seats are sold out before you even get a chance to buy them directly from the Yankees on February 29. Now is when you'll have to enter into the murky waters of the Yankee ticket secondary market. Because this is the last year of the current Yankee Stadium, I have a feeling tickets are going to be harder to come by than usual and people will be squeezing every penny out of you.

I would always start out with New York's Craigs List. Taking a quick look at Craigs List, it looks like the market is ALREADY flooded with sellers. Now is the time that they are going to be demanding above face value, even for non-premium games. You should never pay above face value on Craigs List for anything other than premium games - it is not in the spirit of the site and it says as much when you post a listing to sell something. Don't let these people ruin the site. The best time to buy from Craigs List is in the days before the game you are going to. Sellers want to get rid of their tickets quickly and are more likely to take face value or below. If you are coming from out of town and are buying tickets from Craigs List, don't bother emailing the buyer unless they explicitly state the price of their tickets in the post. Too many buyers are asking for "best offer" which is a waste of your time. When they list the price, you can easily compare it to the Yankees face value price and see if they are worth purchasing. As a warning - you will be wading through a LOT of listings on Craigs List, and there will be a lot more work in arranging pickup of the tickets, payment, etc. That being said, you are getting the best value and there are no commission fees to worry about.

If you want to be spoon-fed and don't mind paying a little more money for tickets, you can head on over to Stub Hub. I'm sure nearly everyone is familiar with Stub Hub by now. The beauty of the site is that you can get the best seats in the stadium, the worst seats in the stadium, or ANYTHING in between. The downfall of the site is that they charge sellers AND buyers a commission fee, bumping up the cost of the tickets. That being said, it is VERY convenient, you don't have to deal face to face with ANYONE, and there are often bargains to be had. Below is an example of a deal that fellow blogger Kaybli recently purchased:

ORDER INFORMATION
------------------------------

Order #: xxxxxxx
Order Date: 02/22/2008 08:18 AM

Toronto Blue Jays at New York Yankees Tickets
Yankee Stadium, Bronx, NY
04/03/2008 07:05 PM
(Event time subject to change. Check local listings.)

Quantity: 2
Section: MB 246
Row: B
Comments: MAIN CHAMP BETWEEN HOME AND THIRD BASE
Special Note: Main Champ
----------------------------------------
BILLING INFORMATION
----------------------------------------
Subtotal: $154.00

Commission: $15.40
Shipping: $11.95

Order Total: $181.35

According to the official Yankee Stadium seating chart. those tickets are $180 - $280 PER ticket at face value. You can see above that Kaybli paid less than that for BOTH seats.

The Stub Hub interface is very user-friendly, and you can easily scroll around each section and see what the price range available is. Always have the stub hub window open beside the Yankee tickets pricing chart, and you won't get ripped off. For any games in the cold months of April and the beginning of May, you should easily be able to get main reserved tickets at a two for one value and upper deck seats at face value or slightly below, even on Stub Hub.

I personally will never pay more than face value to see a Yankee game. I feel that for the price of tickets and everything else at the Stadium, you should never have to pay more than that. I realize that this year MAY be different due to people cramming in one final trip to the stadium, or possibly people not wanting to miss the chance to make their first and only trip to the historic "House That Ruth built." I can only recommend that you are patient and take the time out to research the prices from all sources and become an educated consumer. If you need any more detailed advice, feel free to email me at ross@nyystadiuminsider.com and I will do my best to help.

Good luck getting tickets! Read the full post, after the jump

Yankees Flex Plan? Season Ticket Upgrade? DON'T BOTHER

Well, there is a couple hours of my life that I will never get back.

Long story short - Yankees send out email about it "being my turn" to go and pick games if I want to add a 20-game flex plan to my account. I wasn't so sure if I wanted to, but I thought I'd check it out. An hour later, I was still trying to log into the ticketmaster system without errors. Once I was in the system, I kept on receiving unknown errors which I eventually realized were because I was selecting seat locations/games that weren't available. Unfortunately the system didn't inform me of that. Apparently this was some new system that the Yankees have implemented to allow for more streamlined ticket buying - mission failed. Needless to say, I didn't get a flex plan this year.

Today I got ANOTHER email from the Yankees with some more "good news"... My ticket upgrade request was received and I could call the 1-800 # provided to talk to a ticket representative about an upgraded seat location. For about an hour I called the number and when I chose to speak to a representative, a recorded message told me that all operators were busy helping other customers and to call back later. No option to hold, they simply hung up on me. Finally, I got through to a person and told him I wanted to talk about upgrading my seat location. Unfortunately, "their system was down" and he had to take down my name and number and call me back. An hour later I got a call back and they didn't have any better seats in my section. Glad I wasted an hour of my life with that fiasco.

So, the moral of the story here is good luck getting tickets for the general on-sale or any other Yankee-sponsored ticket buying opportunities. The supposed new system is busted and apparently the demand is far out-pacing the supply (obvious). I guess I shouldn't even bother mentioning the gruff response to any questions when presenting them to a New York Yankee ticket agent. Their goal in life is to get the customer off of the phone as quickly as possible, even if they are raising their ticket prices by 47%.

Silly me, I should just be happy that I am privileged enough to call myself a Yankee fan - right? Read the full post, after the jump

Newsflash (not so much) Parking Rates to increase at the stadium

In the non-shocking news story of the day (man Yankee news is SLOW right now), parking rates will go up at the stadium this year, next year and probably every year. In other news, rents in NYC continue to rise, Metrocards keep on costing more money and Time Warner Cable just raised their rates.

C'mon guys, everyone knows the best way to get to the stadium:





MASS TRANSIT!

MY question is - why hasn't the rise in ticket prices been a bigger story? In one of the first posts on this blog, I quoted the following piece of a Village Voice article on the new Stadium:

On average, baseball teams have hiked tickets by 41 percent their first year in new homes. A city economic study projected even greater sticker shock in the Bronx, with the average ticket rising to $57, from $28 currently. At that rate of increase, Bleacher Creatures would be paying $24 a pop to chant "Box seats suck!"

So, the average increase in ticket prices in NEW stadiums is 41%, yet the Yankees raised my tickets 47% in the final season of the OLD stadium? HUH?

THAT is a bigger new story people - NOT parking rates going up two dollars.

Be sure to discuss this and everything else in the NYY Stadium Insider Forums Read the full post, after the jump

2008 Yankee Ticket prices - Soon I won't be such a Stadium Insider

Well, the Yankees sent the packet of doom in the mail today - the invoice for 2008 season tickets.

I couldn't believe the raise in price.

They have now changed Tier Reserved, section 1 to the "Tier Reserved MVP" section. That is fancy talk for a huge price increase. Try $17 - $25 per ticket. That is a 47% increase.

Now, just imagine what the percent increase will be when the Yankees move into the NEW Yankee Stadium in 2009. It will probably be another 75-100% increase. It has gotten to the point where my family seriously cannot afford the season tickets anymore.

There is a trap here - the Yankees want me to say "hey, I have great upper deck seats, I need to keep them. This is the last season in the old stadium." So, I shell out the money for the huge increase. Then, next year, another insane ticket price increase comes in the mail right around Chrismastime and I say to myself: "hey, its the NEW Yankee Stadium. I have had these tickets for YEARS, I NEED to have season tickets in the new stadium". And the process repeats as I spiral into debt.

Well, this working man has seen his time as a season ticket holder come to an end. I was always a proponent of the Yankees spending ridiculous amounts of money to hold onto their players, but I am finally at wits end. The 3 year, $45 million contract the Yankees handed to Mariano was ridiculous. Jorge and A-Rod were ridiculous as well, but more justifiable.

The Yankees have somehow managed to ruin my holiday season. Now I need to figure out a way to get rid of my season ticket license and make some money on the deal. Anyone interested in buying my license off of me? The seats are in tier reserved, section 1, row M. You won't be able to get anything close to these seats if you sign up for season tickets this year.

Here are the brand new prices:



(click to see big) Read the full post, after the jump