B-Plan season ticket holders - check your mailbox tomorrow!

The day of reckoning is finally upon us - B-plan season ticket assignments for the new Yankee Stadium in 2009 are in the mail.

Early signs are not promising for B-Plan holders. We were welcomed with this message on Yankees.com today:

Overwhelming Demand for 41-Game Plans:

Due to overwhelming demand for 41-Game Plans, we strongly suggest that Licensees accept their initial seat assignment. The demand for 41-Game Plans will definitely exceed the available 41-Game Plan seat locations. Accordingly, any 2008 “B” Plan Licensees who have requested a 41-Game Plan seat assignment, but who do not receive one initially due to the current lack of availability, will be assigned a 41-Game Plan seat location, if any inventory remains, prior to the commencement of the 41-Game Plan pool process.

41 game assignment letter

I have a feeling there are going to be some disappointed Yankee fans tomorrow. Hopefully we here at New Stadium Insider make the cut.

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

New Yankee Stadium Relocation still stuck in neutral

Just one week until the calendar flips to the frigid month of February, 22 days until pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training. Meanwhile, partial plan season ticket holders are still clicking refresh on their email and waiting by their phones religiously - awaiting word from the New York Yankees ticket office about their relocation to the New Yankee Stadium. The majority of the Yankees' front office moved over to their new home yesterday, but in what may or may not be some sort of ominous sign, the ticket office was left behind (they are scheduled to move on Feb 27, so expect relocation to be done by that date).

On another note, if you are one of the Yankee fans lucky enough to be able to afford FULL SEASON tickets (meaning you have already been located), don't give up hope on getting BETTER seats. There have been reports of deadbeats not paying their invoices on time, leaving their vacated seats ripe for the taking. Success has been reported by calling the Yankee ticket office multiple times per day and asking if there are any seats better than the seats currently assigned to you. It really is all about timing and luck, but there have been some success stories that I have heard about.

There are two numbers for the Yankee ticket office:

(718)-293-6000 or (800)-913-9731

From past experience, the people answering the 800 number have been relatively friendly and helpful, while the 718 number is manned by angry old men. Perhaps my experience is from a small sample size of phone calls, but I would try the 800 number first.

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

What seats are left for partial plan season ticket holders?

As most people are aware, the Yankees are running behind in the season ticket holder relocation process. We are now entering the 2nd half of January and Full Season ticket holders and upgrades just finished the relocation process. 41 game and 20 game plans are next in line, but are there any decent seats left in the Grandstand? (Please note, this post is only referring to Grandstand relocation. I am speaking from personal experience and knowledge of my own situation, which is obviously in the Grandstand/Upper Deck - sorry to anyone reading this looking for information about relocation in other sections of the New Stadium).

There have been rumors that the last 3 rows in all Grandstand sections are being held back for partial plans. The Yankees ticket office has not gone on the record about this, but a quick look at RipOff StubHub should give partial plan holders some hope. If you take a look at the "odd number" games (first game of the season, third game of the season, etc.) which are the ones that 41 game plan holders receive, you will notice that StubHub has no inventory above row 11. Further, there is no inventory at ALL in sections 405,406, 407a/b, 408, 409, 432, 434a/b on StubHub - not a surprise considering outfield upper deck seats are the worst in any Stadium.

Don't just believe me - take a look for yourself at the Yankees 2009 ticket inventory on StubHub.

Also of note - it appears that all Bleacher seats are up for grabs on StubHub, so it appears those won't be available for partial plan season ticket holders.

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

Whispers from the Yankee ticket office - Grandstand (upper deck) seats being held back for partial plan holders

As I have mentioned previously, there is a great ongoing message board thread at NYYFans about the New York Yankees season ticket holder relocation process.

According to a member over at NYYFans, the Yankees have been finishing up the full-season relocation process by soliciting partial plan holders to upgrade to a full season plan. Unfortunately, they are being informed that no Grandstand seats (formerly the "Tier Reserved") are left. According to reports, the "last few" rows of the Grandstand are being held back for the partial plan holders who have been on the sidelines thus far during the relocation process.

Where this leaves myself is still anyone's guess. I am a B-Plan holder with a seniority date of April 2005 and Old Yankee Stadium seats in Section 1, Row M. I have long been optimistic that my seats in the New Yankee Stadium would be somewhere in the infield, somewhat behind home plate, and in the Grandstand. As encouraging the news of seats being held back for partials is, I'm not sure enough are being held back to keep my location ideal.

According to season ticket holder reports, partial plan holders should receive their invoice sometime in January. It seems to be a daunting task, but as one astute ticket holder pointed out:

Would it be fair to assume that the 41, and two 20 game plans are going to be assigned from the same group of seats (since 41+20+20=81 games) They can essentially build a full season seat from combining these plans.

And then the remaining partials will be assigned from what's left after this?
(15+15+15+12+12+11=80 games with no opening day) and they will build a full season seat out of these plans as well?

THEN....what's left after this gets fought over by the public?

Makes perfect sense to me!

Feel free to report any personal experiences in the comments.

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

New Yankee Stadium Season Ticket Holder relocation update

This just in from the Yankee ticket office:

I just wanted to send you a quick email to let you know that we started our relocation process this week with our Full and A Plan holders. Once we have completed the assignment process for the Full Plans we will move to the Full Season Pool and then to the 41-Game Plan assignments. We anticipate having invoices and seating locations mailed to Full and A Plan holders in about 3-5 weeks, so I imagine the Relocation Department will be in touch with you in mid-December. Please feel free to contact me with any questions you might have about the relocation process.

I have to give credit where credit is due. I have always voiced my displeasure at the lack of correspondence from the Yankee ticket office, but they have done the right thing here. In these crazy economic times, it is good to know that the new invoice will be arriving right around the holiday season.

If you are a season ticket holder, definitely keep an eye out for an email of this sort. It is NOT a form email sent within a template. It appears to be my ticket representative reaching out.


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

Yankee Relocation guide close to going live on Yankees.com

Update (8/29) As seen in the comments below by a not so friendly tipster, a couple of the below-mentioned links are actually live. Peep the comments and thanks for the kind words about the site.

New seating chart with prices

3-D Stadium Tour / Seating Chart

A tipster over at the NYYSI forums has alerted me to this page that he found in Google cache. The page, which is set to go live here at an unspecified date offers a bit more insight into the relocation process, but not much.

At the top of the page, we can see that it says:

Click Here to fill out the relocation questionnaire
Questionnaire must be submitted by September 10,2008

To give fans any reasonable amount of time, they are going to need to go live on this site VERY soon.

Finally, there is this small print:

Opting Out of the Relocation Program
You are not required to participate in the Relocation Program. Licensees may seek to license Plans, subject to availability, as well as tickets to individual Games, outside of the Relocation Program. However, due to the limited inventory of tickets and anticipated demand for tickets under the Relocation Program, you are strongly encouraged to participate in the Relocation Program. Any tickets licensed outside of the Relocation Program will likely result in your receiving a less desirable seating location than had you participated in the Relocation Program.

Failure to Respond by the Invoice Date
If you fail to accept or decline your assignment in the manner described in this Guide by the due date reflected on the invoice accompanying your assignment, you will have no right to license a Plan through the Relocation Program.

Unfortunately, the invoice date is not available anywhere on that cached page.

It looks like there will be a "3-D seat selector" featured on that page as well, so you should be able to check out the view from your likely worse seats before taking the plunge.

Good luck everyone, the day of reckoning is nearly upon us.

Once again, thanks to "peterb" (not to be confused with petera) on the forums for this tip

Talk about it in the NYYSI Forums!

Read the full post, after the jump

The dream still lives - for reasonably priced Yankee tickets in '09

Not so buried in the bevy of articles regarding the Mets top tier ticket price announcement were some more promising quotes from Lonn Trost (Yankees COO). Here is the juicy quote:

"Whatever works for them, I'm happy for them," Yankees chief operating officer Lonn Trost said. "We do what we think is appropriate. In order to have 47,000 affordable seats, we had to have 4,500 expensive seats."

C'mon Lonn - don't take the high road. You should pull a Hank quote about those fans paying less because they are paying for an inferior product! Anyway, the more quotes I read from Lonn saying this very thing, the more I realize that it will be very hard to back-track on their repeated promises to not raise ticket prices for the "cheap seats".

Here is some more info from that article, but this is probably old information and not based on anything Lonn said yesterday:

The Yankees have not announced prices for the seats near the outfield but say they will keep the lowest-priced reserved seats in the top deck at $20 and $25 and bleachers at $12. Trost said 25,000 seats will not have an increase and that a complete price list will be released this month.

Very reasonable.

Finally, here is some interesting info about the Mets "Upper Deck" ticket pricing for next year, and also about how they are handling season ticket sales:

Reserved seats in the upper deck at Citi Field, called the Promenade, will average $19.

Howard said the Mets have talked to about 3,000 season ticket holders about relocation and hope to speak with about 3,000 more by the end of next month. The Mets are requiring 10 percent deposits for next year.

10% seems fair. The Yankees will probably ask for it all. That would fall in line with their annual invoice that arrives two weeks before it is due. The idea is to give the people with seniority as little time as possible in order to push them out and not have to deal with their seating priorities.

So, Yankee ticket prices are due "this month". We'll see about that - they've been saying the same thing since the winter.

Go check out the AP article, it has some more interesting info about the Mets tiered ticket prices vs. The Yankees uniform pricing for weekday, weekend, premium, and other variations.


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

Season ticket holder update - Relocation guides are "printing"

A warning shot was fired by our buddy Lonn Trost today:

Dear Yankees Ticket Licensee,

We have reached another important milestone in our move from Yankee Stadium to the new Yankee Stadium across the street. Your Relocation Program Guide for the New Yankee Stadium (the "Guide") is in the process of being printed and you can expect to receive your Guide in the near future. The Guide will outline the seat relocation program, explain the criteria to be used to assign seat locations, detail ticket prices and ticket license options, and serve as your introduction to the new Yankee Stadium.

C'mon Lonnie, just pull the band-aid off already and tell me the damage!

And now we play the waiting game...

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

Found on the interwebs: New Yankee Stadium 2009 Seating Chart

Take it with a grain of salt, but this supposed 2009 New Yankee Stadium seating chart is floating around the web.


(click to enlarge)

Based on the username of the person who posted that on baseball-fever (WBMason), my educated guess is that the Yankees provided the new seating chart to advertisers in the current Yankee Stadium so they can decide if/where they want to advertise in the new stadium.

So, what did we learn from that leaked seating chart?
1) Seating in Yankee stadium just got WAY more confusing (21 different levels of seating?!)
2) Suites are plentiful (horray for rich people filling up the seats!)

Of course, I will scan up ALL of the official season ticket holder new Yankee Stadium documentation as soon as I receive the 2009 Yankee Stadium Relocation Guide. Now at least I know that Tier Reserved MVP section 1 in Yankee Stadium 2008 = Grandstand 420B in the new Yankee Stadium 2009. Fingers are crossed for a fair relocation!

H/T to Greg over at Sliding Into Home for his post which alerted me to this and of course big ups to WBMason over at baseball-fever.com if this is in fact real.

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

Finally some concrete information on new Yankee Stadium 2009 Pricing in the "cheap" seats

The AP is reporting on the new Yankee Stadium 2009 pricing with splashy headlines about how much more expensive things are going to be.

However, buried at the end of the article is this juicy bit of information that has me pretty excited as a season ticket holder in the Tier Reserved MVP section:

As for the regular seats, the Yankees hope to send out a relocation plan in April. Through Thursday, the Yankees had sold 39,141 full-season equivalents.

Trost said there will be about 11,000 non-premium seats at field level and 12,000 at the main level. He said 25,000 seats from the final year of the current ballpark won't be increased for 2009.

"Of the non-premium seats, 88 percent will be less than $100," he said. "It's easy to say that that's not cheap, but on the other 55 percent of the ballpark is going to be $45 or less. That's over 24,000 seats. We recognize everybody can't afford the suites. At the same time, we're trying to allow those suite prices to subsidize the other seating in the stadium. Look, the bleachers are $12, will be $12. The grandstand is $20 and $25, will be $20 and $25."

The "he" in the quotes is Lonnie Trost, COO of the Yankees.

This is clearly good news as it looks like next year will NOT see a price increase for the Tier Reserved, MVP seats.

However, I am in section 1 right now (DIRECTLY behind home plate) and have around 4 years of seniority. The HUGE question remains - where will my seats be located in the new stadium?

As soon as I receive that relocation guide in the mail, I will post the exciting information here.

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

Yankees to Season Ticket Holders: Don't expect to sit in the same place in the New Yankee Stadium

The Yankees sent out their first correspondence in regard to season ticket holder seating location in the new stadium when it opens in 2009. As has become the norm for letters from the Yankees, it is quite vague.

To sum up the most "important" parts in a document that otherwise left me more curious than before it was sent:

"During the 2008 Season, you will receive official New Yankee Stadium Relocation Program information, which will contain a Relocation Guide and other related materials. The Relocation Guide will detail our comprehensive Relocation Program as well as your options for securing seat locations at the new Yankee Stadium. It will also contain information detailing the criterias used to establish the Relocation Program. [snip]

Please be aware that the seat location and quantity of games included in all current Ticket License Plans are subject to change when you relocate to the new Yankee Stadium."

Basically, you are guaranteed nothing. I will have around 4 seasons of seniority under my belt by the time the new Stadium rolls around. From the wording of this letter, I shouldn't be too hopeful about my chances to keep this view (from Tier Reserved MVP, section 1):



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