The Yankees, through Hal Steinbrenner, have issued a statement concerning “price adjustments and benefits” that are being adopted for a few hundred Legends Suite and Delta Sky 360 Suite Licensees and as an inducment to get people to buy the $325 field level seats.

However, this “compromise” does nothing to affect the average fan and is clearly aimed toward the corporate ticket holder who now has more “complimentary” tickets to give out.  It’s also only for “this year”.  They have no intention of doing this next year (I suspect).

In essence, if you have the super expensive tickets, in the front row $2500, the Yankees are giving you an equal number of front row seats.  If you had the $1,250 front row seats, those seats dropped to $650 (however since there are no “inducements” associated with $650 seats, it’s likely no one purchased any of those, which allows the Yankees to give away an equal number ”complimentary.”

The other Lengends Suite seats get tickets added to their plan depending on the price of the seat, which lowers the effective price of the seat. Do the math.  Once you add in the “complimentary” tickets, the effective price of the seats drops.

Original price (# comp seats)(effective price)
Legend Suite seats
$2500 (82) ($1250)
$1250 (24) ($966)
$850 (12) ($741)
$600 (10) ($528)
$500 (8) ($455)

Field Level Seats  – To entice people to buy these overpriced seats ($325 each) they came up with a cockamamey formula to give season ticket holders extra seats.  Depending on how many seats you have, you get either a reduced number of seats for every other game, or half of your seats for the remainder of the season.  (If you have 2 seats, you get 2 seats to every other game (effectively one extra seat), If you have 4 seats, you get 2 seats to every remaining game, etc.).  As a result, they have  lowered the effective price of the Field level seats from $325 to approximately $216 ($227-$243 if you were dumb enough to buy an odd number of seats).

This way they can fill the seats, but not create an uproar among those who shelled out the scheckles.  It also allows them to not to adjust the price of other seats.  There are a lot of people who paid $225, $175, and $150 for field level seats that will be ticked to know that they are sitting out past the bases when people behind the plate are now, effectively, paying only a little more than they did.  However, they don’t want to readjust the whole stadium, which (except for the Grandstand) they probably need to do.

By the way, the effective price is essentially what they were charging behind the plate/dugouts last year ($250 per game) and had they set that priced from the start, and incrementaly increased the ticket prices as they went up and out, they would have had a lot more takers, and had a full stadium.  I know if I paid $225 to sit out by 3rd base in the first row of the field level, I’d be pretty ticked, because a) I’m effectively paying more than the guys behind the plate on a per/game basis, and b) I’m out past 3rd base!.