From SI.com:
Selling suites may not be so sweet a business for the New York Yankees in these tough economic times.Seven luxury boxes down the foul lines priced at $600,000 remain available for the 2009 season, the first at the new Yankee Stadium. The team still had seven available in August, too.
"There's no getting away from the fact that the world is different than it was, so traffic slows," chief operating officer Lonn Trost said Tuesday. "So you don't have 10 people banging on the door. You may only have two people."
"We can see that the economy is affecting the traffic that is coming around," he said. "Listen, nobody can avoid it. We recognize it. You wake up in the morning and you see it. So we're trying to work with our fan base and understand what their needs are."Back in early October Bloomberg reported that the Yanks had seven luxury boxes still available and apparently nothing has changed. With the economy the way it is there is a chance that these boxes will remain vacant into the 2009 season.
[Lonn Trost] said in August that 3,500 of the 4,300 premium seats had been sold, including the $500-$2,500 per-game tickets near home plate in the first nine rows of 25 sections ringing home plate.I love the Yankees, and I hope they continue to make money so that they can continue to put the best team money can buy on the field. But with that said, I'm also a big fan of the current stadium, and really don't understand the need for a new stadium besides the extra money it would put in the Steinbrenner's pockets. To me the new place isn't for the fans, it's for the Steinbrenners to continue to get richer and richer, and I'd find it very amusing that the new stadium might not be living up to the pocket packing expectations they had in mind.
Speaking after a news conference to announce a technology agreement with Cisco Systems Inc., Trost didn't have an updated figure on premium seats and said it was too early to determine how well season-ticket sales were going for the $1.3 billion ballpark.
9 Comments:
The big problem with the old Yankee Stadium is that it is ugly. Yes, there are memories but personally I take gigantic and beautiful over history any day. That is just me though. I have forever hated the screen right over the left center wall, it makes the place look atrocious. The stadium needed to become more modern with seats almost all the way around. The loges at the other stadium provided too much dead space.
Yankee Stadium ugly?
Put the pipe down my friend.
7 x $600,000 = $4.2M. Yes, that's a lot of money by "our" standards, and yes, there will also be food/merch revenue that won't be coming in IF those suites remain empty, so let's even say that the Yankees stand to lose $10M from this. That's nothing, for the Yankees.
But anyway, I have to say that as much as old YS was loved, it really did have significant drawbacks and many ugly features. There were many things that were done wrong during the 70s refurb, and the stadium needed fixing. They could have spent $1B to refurb it again (probably significantly more since a lot of the structure would need to have been replaced internally), and then the Yankees would have no stadium to play in for 2-3 years. Shea? Ugh.
In the end, the Yankees had to make a decision to maximize revenue. They're the highest spending team in baseball, and baseball is ALWAYS about the business. As long as they're using as much money as they can to maximize the on-field product, then I'm happy. That's what it's all about. I love the Yankees because they're the Yankees, and without a good product on the field, I wouldn't care WHAT stadium they're playing in.
Again, the current stadium was in major need of a significant refurb. The seats were tight, leg room was bad, concessions were weak, bathrooms digusting, sightlines obscured all over the place... In the end, the decision to build a new stadium across the street was SO much better than refurbing the current stadium just so we could say "it's on the same GPS coordinates."
anon,
I don't think Yankee Stadium is ugly at all. That's just my opinion.
I also don't think the new stadium is that great. It's nice, and I enjoy following the construction of the place, but if you take the frieze away it looks like a generic cookie-cutter stadium to me. And that restaurant in centerfield makes me want to stab myself in the eyes.
Also how to you build a $1.6 billion dollar stadium and still have 300 obstructed seats (the ones on either side of that restaurant)?
Pinstripes,
I agree that building a new place worked a lot better than refurbishing the old, but I don't think the situation or shape of the current place was as dire as you're making it out to be.
I was having a bad night last night and took it out on Yankee Stadium but the Old Yankee Stadium did have many drawbacks. I personally like to see the game even if I get up from my seat. That is one plus to the new stadium. I do like stadiums that don't have so much dead space which the new one doesn't have too much of. I do agree that the restaurant looks out of place in Center Field. I don't know what they could of put there instead but the restaurant needs to go.
Just to avoid repeating what he said, I have to say that I agree with Pinstripes.
Mike
The new stadium will be one of the best in the league. Once we start winning again, no one will complain.
"Once we start winning again, no one will complain."
The 300 people stuck on either side of that restaurant who can't see the game will.
Oh, and all those people who decided not to renew their season tickets because they raised the price so much that they can't afford them will as well.
Greg, I agree with you. There was nothing wrong with the old stadium. The sight lines were great, even the upper tiers at the bottom of the upper deck loomed over the field intimidating visiting players by the fans closeness to the field. During less than capacity games you could always move down for a closer view. Now you have a caste system stadium, rich stay with the riche, poor are locked away in the upper deck, where the untouchables stay penned in their section where the rich won't have to have contact with them.
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