Relocation News: We Are Back In The B Plan

We would love to believe the company line that "some cancellations were processed and the seats became available." Maybe the ticket office finally did reach our name on the waiting list. Perhaps we would even give credence to the idea that all of our emails and phone calls to the Yankees had finally paid dividends. We just sincerely hope that our repeated and public venting about the botched relocation on this blog had absolutely no affect on the call we received today, offering us a 41 game plan in section 428.

This signifies a happy ending to our long and frustrating relocation journey and hopefully many others enjoy the same fate. This weekend, we received word that fellow Yankee season ticket holder and Baseball Prospectus writer Jay Jaffe has had his relocation reconsidered and got seats more to his liking. He made sure to point out that his friend's name is on the account and there is no way the Yankees could link him to his article taking advantage of his prominent position at Baseball Prospectus . It just seems a bit suspicious that the two most public and vocal opponents to the Yankee relocation program were silenced within days of each other.

At the end of the day, we're just happy fans who finally feel like we have had a say in our relationship with the team that we dole out plenty of money to support. We can finally look forward to watching our favorite team play our favorite sport, and not have to worry about what games we don't have tickets to. One thing is for sure, getting back on our B plan will make us no less critical of the Yankees and their employees when it is warranted.

For example, today some unlucky fans with 2008 seniority received the bad news that the Yankees were changing their mind about the relocation guide and they would not be receiving partial plans in 2009. Taken directly from the relocation guide on the Yankee website, it is clear that these people were mislead:

If you licensed and maintained a Partial Season Plan for the 2008 Season, you will be assigned the same number of seats in the new Yankee Stadium as are included in your Partial Season Plan at the end of the 2008 Season. In making assignments under the Relocation Program, the Yankees will, among other things, consider your seating preferences as indicated on your Relocation Program Questionnaire. Please note, however, that your assigned seat location will not likely be comparable to your current seat location in Yankee Stadium. Further, since the Partial Season Plans being offered for the 2009 Season in the new Yankee Stadium are not identical to the current Partial Season Plans, you will be given an opportunity on the Relocation Program Questionnaire to indicate the 2009 Partial Season Plan that you believe works best for you.

The Yankees had overwhelming demand for their larger plans, especially full season, and someone had to pay the price. It is understandable that people with the least seniorty should have the last shot at tickets. What is unfathomable is printing an official relocation correspondence and not even considering the idea of lowering expectations in case things really didn't go as planned.

A little bit of warning would have gone a long way in keeping these jilted ticket holders from revolt. Most of those with 2008 seniority and small partial plans understand their place in the Yankee ticket pecking order. When the official documentation outlining the relocation was blatantly ignored, however, these people suffered an immense Yankee-induced disappointment.

Confidence in the competency of the higher-ups in the Yankee ticket office lowers with each day's blunder. Today, the ticket office sent out an official announcement about ticket pre-sale dates. Unfortunately, the dates on the correspondence were a week later than the actual dates - a blatant typo that was somehow overlooked. Of course, mass confusion among ticket holders ensued, and the Yankees quickly sent out another email acknowledging the error in the earlier email. This sort of correspondence is essentially a form letter. How could they get wrong the one detail that the document was centered on? Incompetence defined.

We even coaxed some information out of our ticket representative regarding some seats in row 14 of the Grandstand that needed to be pulled due to obstructed views. This ticket representative has just dealt with the awakward situation of having to tell a season ticket holder that their seat wasn't exactly a viable option. It obviously doesn't reflect too well on the Yankee organization when major flaws are being discovered in 1.3 billion dollar stadium just weeks before opening. They deserve credit for recognizing the row 14 flaw before the season commenced, but also deserve any criticism they receive due to the design flaw ever occuring. Apparently, there will still be 14 rows in the Grandstand, but some more construction needs to take place before the Yankees include them in season ticket plans and not as single-game obstructed view seats.

Apparently all season ticket packets should be received via FedEx (they have switched shipping providers for 2009) no later than April 10. Many of the tickets are already at the printer. As a matter of fact, the tickets for our previously invoiced 20 game plan have been at the printer since March 3, and we will have to return them to the Yankees before being refunded for the price of that plan. Even though the Yankees have not yet completed the relocation process, rest assured that your tickets are being printed. As for us, we won't truly believe this saga is over until we have the reassuring feel of rectangular slices of cardboard between our fingers. Read the full post, after the jump

The Final Slap In The Face To Partial Plan Ticket Holders

As everyone knows by now, we were downgraded from a B-plan (41 games) that we had since 2005 to a 20 game plan for the 2009 season, pretty much against our will (we were offered the B plan for $350 premium seats), during the relocation process.

Today, the Yankees issued the final slap in the face via this press release:

Prior to the public on-sale, all Yankees Premium, Full-Season and 41-Game Ticket Licensees will be able to purchase individual-game tickets, online only, via a pre-on-sale on Thursday, March 19. On the following day, Friday, March 20, all other Partial Plan Licensees (of 20-, 15-, 12- and 11-Game Plans) will be permitted to purchase individual-game tickets online only as well. For complete information, including ticket limits, please visit yankees.com.

This really is the decisive insult by the New York Yankees to their loyal ticket holders. Not only were former B-plan holders inconvenienced by losing their opening day tickets, their playoff tickets, and 21 additional games when they were downgraded to 20 game plans, but now we are bunched in with all of the other partial plan holders (and minor league season ticket holders!) for the pre-sale.

Instead of throwing us a bone and giving us the "first crack" at the premium games, downgraded B-plan holders are once again on the outside looking in, as people in the plan we used to be in and WISH WE COULD STILL BE IN get to purchase more tickets to games they already have.

This is an absolute disgrace. We truly hope that Richard Sandomir, Neil Best, Neil deMause and Jay Jaffe catch wind of this and give it the same attention that previous relocation fiascos have received.

The updated dates are as follows:

• March 17 - Registration for online sales random drawing end.
• March 18 - Random drawing for general public online sales takes place.
• March 19 - Yankee season ticket licensee pre-sale date for 2009 New York Yankees single game tickets for Full Season, Premium Seat and 41 game plan holders .
• March 20 - Emails are sent to "winners" of random drawing.
• March 20- Minor leage affiliates and Yankees partial plan (20-, 15-, 12- and 11-Game Plans) ticket licensee pre-sale date for 2009 New York Yankees single game tickets.
• March 23 (10 AM - 10PM) - Online only sale for 2009 Yankee single game tickets (with limitations on premium games) for those chosen in random drawing.
• March 24 - General on-sale for 2009 New York Yankee tickets at all outlets for any remaining tickets (Ticketmaster, Yankee Clubhouse stores, New Yankee Stadium Ticket Office).

Read the full post, after the jump

Who Said There Was More Leg Room At The New Yankee Stadium?

We recently posted photos illustrating the much-improved leg room for the seats in the Grandstand at the New Yankee Stadium. Unfortunately the same cannot be said about these multi-year commitment, $500 per ticket seats down the first base line:


Hey, at least there is plenty of padding!*

Wherever you are sitting this morning, be happy it is not in those seats. Obviously, they are not in their permanent home (we hope!), but with how this new stadium relocation process has been going, anything is possible. After all, the Yankees did build a restaurant that blocks the view for half of the people in the bleachers!



*Thanks to the Baseball Fever stadium construction thread via this web album for this hilarious photo.

Talk about it in the Stadium Insider Forums!

Tax Season is here - Save By E-Filing Your Taxes and tell 'em Stadium Insider sent you - Only $19.95! Read the full post, after the jump

The furor grows over the relocation process

Credits: Bill Bramhall/News

I must admit, I am about as sick of hearing about the New Yankee Stadium relocation drama as I am about the PED drama. Sadly, the media latches onto a story and can't let go. Local newspapers first caught on this weekend, running quote-heavy stories as a platform for jilted fans to air their grievances. The NY Daily News even had Bill Bramhall create the HILARIOUS cartoon seen above. This is the PERFECT story for New York City talk radio to spend hours talking about and they are definitely up to the task. Mike Francesca announced on his radio show this afternoon that WFAN is working hard to schedule an interview with Yankees Chief Operating Officer Lonn Trost for Wednesday's radio show. Even the blogosphere was a bit late to the party on this story, but now the interwebs are incensed. Baseball Prospectus author Jay Jaffe took the Yankees to task for leaving long time partial-plan ticket holders with terrible seat choices.

The media has taken on a noble cause but they need to stay focused. In order to make Lonn Trost squirm and not spin his way out of this PR nightmare, Francesca needs to ask him the following questions:

1. Why didn't the Yankee ticket office and outside consulting firm, Turnsyle Ticketing, follow the guidelines set forth in the original relocation package? What (other than greed) inspired the Yankees to allow ALL partial plan holders to upgrade to full season plans even after the original deadline for voicing such interest had passed?
2. Why was there such incompetence in the Yankee ticket office (embarrassing typos in emails, contradictory information, etc.). Where was the leadership and why did the crosstown-rival Mets relocation process go relatively smoothly?
   
3. How many seats are being held back for single game seats in order to play up the "half of the seats in the Stadium are under $25" angle? Partial plan season ticket holders are being shifted all over the Stadium and being bumped from plans and they deserve to know how much of that is being caused by seats being held for the general public on sale. Transparency has been an issue from day one of this process, hidden behind the wordy legal diatribe also known as the relocation packet.
   
4. How much did the recent deal with Stubhub factor into the relocation process and scare tactics forcing partial plan holders to upgrade to full season? The Yankees receive a considerable commission on every ticket sold by season ticket holders on Stubhub. Did the Yankees knowingly scare season ticket holders into upgrading to full season packages with the intention of cashing in on the Stubhub commissions when they inevitably became ticket brokers for the team? This sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory but the fact remains that by forcing fans to upgrade to full season plans, the Yankees guaranteed a sold out Stadium in a terrible economy, while also turning on the faucet to another revenue stream in Stubhub commissions. Fans buying full season plans and stretching their budgets created the need to turn to Stubhub to get back some of that investment. True fans upgraded to full season plans in order to guarantee previous seat location and playoff rights, scalpers upgraded to full season plans in order to profit off of the new Stadium, and the Yankees ended up profiting on all of them. Make Lonn admit the Stubhub connection was key in this screwjob for loyal fans.
   
5. What are the Yankees going to do about the unsold "Greatest Seats in the World" once the season starts. A brand new stadium is going to look silly on TV when all of the prime seats are empty. In retrospect, did the Yankees get a bit too aggressive with the $350 pricetag of those seats and are there any plans to change the price? Further, was the $350 price worth the hassle, not only due to the absence of interest, but also considering the significant shifting it caused, further muddling the relocation process for the ticket office and the fans. There was no way the average fan was going to be able to afford those seats and most downgraded to different locations.
6. Are the Yankees worried that with an ever-deepening recession and bad PR created by the relocation fiasco will affect future ticket sales? A good portion of the large season ticket holder subscription base is comprised of Yankee fans and profiteers who were looking forward to the new stadium. When the shine wears off, will ticket sales slump considerably? A lot of this has to do with putting a winning product on the field, but how long will the Yankees be able to operate profitably while acting as if being a Yankee fan is a privilege and not a right?

Those questions are wordy and a bit emotional, but they will get to the bottom of things fairly quickly. The fact remains that the Yankees are a huge business, and they ran the ticket relocation process in the way that made them the most money. All of the pitchforks and torches in the world aren't going to cause the Yankees to drop their capitalistic approach and I have pretty much come to accept that.

Update (8:20 PM): Lonn Trost addressed some of my questions above in an interview with Newsday's Neil Best. My favorite:

Is it true there are seats in the bleachers from which you can't see parts of the field? "Yes, but we will have TVs in the walls there."

That's not the same thing as seeing it live, is it? "We had a choice of selling it to somebody or not. If you come to the stadium you'll see there are TVs in the walls. [Some views are obstructed] a little bit, but for $12 it's a choice of taking it or not."

If I were an advisor to Lonn Trost, I wouldn't recommend such a defiant tone during a time of PR upheaval. To each their own...

Talk about it in the Stadium Insider Forums!

Read the full post, after the jump

Yankee ticket office finally relocates the smaller partial plans, still struggle to sell the "Greatest Seats In The World"

The new Yankee Stadium Relocation process continues to prod along. Today, weekend plan holders got their relocation and many were shocked to find out that their former Saturday and Sunday plans were bumped to 12 game weekday plans.

The good news is, most people who were bumped for the weekends actually received nice locations within the stadium. The bad news is that most people who requested weekend plans did so for a reason - because they can't go to weekday games.

It is still unclear what this all means for the availability of single game tickets or upgrade opportunities for jilted former B Plan holders who were downgraded to 20 game plans. There are reports on the NYY Fans relocation thread that the waiting list calls have commenced for B Plan availability, but not in large numbers yet. As for single game 2009 Yankee tickets, all we can hang our hat on is the quote by Hal Steinbrenner on WFAN a few weeks ago, stating that tickets will be on sale at the beginning of March. I wouldn't hold my breath.

In other news, things are getting desperate for the Yankees ticket office while trying to sell the premium seats. Things are so bad that they had to take out a full page ad in today's Wall Street Journal and New York Times, as seen below.



I have said it before, but it is worth repeating - the YES production crew is going to earn their money making the Stadium look full on TV for some of those cold April games. The "Greatest Seats In The World just aren't selling, while the cheap seats are all but gone. A poorly timed economic downturn is mainly to blame for the excess of luxury seats, but completely pricing out the average fan is also to blame. The Yankees were banking on corporations to be fawning over the luxury boxes. Now, even the corporations that still have money are ashamed to spend it on anything extraneous, and there aren't any average fans who can afford $350 tickets. Short of the Yankees lowering the price of those expensive seats (which they will NEVER do), expect to see a lot of empty field level seats until the weather heats up.

Finally, if you want to see how nearly 2 billion dollars gets spent, check out this time-lapse video of the New Yankee Stadium being built.

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

My last post about the New Stadium relocation process

I have my official seat assignment for the 20 game plan now, so I can put this entire saga behind me.

As a reminder, in 2005 I signed up to be a B plan season ticket holder. The games were all on the weekdays, but I had a guarantee that if the Yankees made the postseason, I would be there and in my same seats. Here is a view from my old seats:



The days of guaranteed postseason tickets and birds eye views are long gone. For the new Stadium opening in 2009, I have been assigned a 20 game plan in lieu of my 41 game plan because of high demand for full season plans. My new seats are in section 411, row 10. You can check out my new view below:



The silver lining in all of this is that these seats are even LESS expensive than my seats last year and I only have to purchase half the number of games. In these rough economic times (aren't you sick of that expression already?), paying less money isn't a bad thing. I wasn't going to let the Yankees scam me into paying MORE money by upgrading to full season and now I am paying less. Gotta stay positive.

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

First casualties reported in the 41 game plan relocation process...

Word from an anonymous commenter on a previous post (usually not too reliable of a source, but I get a good vibe from this guy) is that the 41 game plan relocation isn't off to a very good start - for him at least.

Mr Anon previously sat in box 611 of the Tier Box MVP at the Old Yankee Stadium (around section 5, on the first base side of home plate). With a seniority date of 1999, you can imagine the horror when he received his relocation invoice today had been assigned seats in section 407,row 7 - almost in FAIR territory in the right field upper deck, just a few rows from the top. Here are a couple of seating charts illustrating just how bad it is for Anon:

OYS:



New Yankee Stadium:


UPDATE 11:33 PM: Fresh from the comments section is more bad news:

Checked my account. I was in 442 last season, now have 334 ROW 7 offered to me. Two words: THIS SUCKS.

If this is any indication of things to come, the author of this blog might not be such a "new Stadium Insider." As I have mentioned before, I have a seniority date of 2005 and my seats used to be in section 1 of the Tier Reserved MVP in Row M. Even I'll admit that it is unfair if I am assigned better seats than Mr. Anon from the comments section.

The major issue that is going to arise from this relocation program is the utterly greedy stance the Yankees took in allowing anyone the possibility of upgrading to a full season plan, leaving the partials in the dust.

They used scare tactics and lack of information to drive people into fear-based financial decisions such as upgrading to a full season plan from partial season plans. Because of that, the Yankees are guaranteed more money, but the average Joe is left sitting in the REALLY cheap seats or even worse - at home. People who upgraded to full season plans are looking smart to some right now since they were assigned the best seat locations. They're also looking like people with a lot of disposable income in a bad economy - a luxury that most people don't have right now. Either that or they let poor and impulsive financial decisions - utilizing credit cards - control their lives. Not so coincidentally, this same type of impulsive decision-maker has been a contributing factor toward our Country's massive national debt and foreclosure crisis.

Not the news I wanted to hear heading into the weekend...

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