Answer – A Field Box Seat Ticket To All 81 Yankee Home Games
In 2021, Two Field Level Tickets For Just One Game Costs More
Digging around my closet I came up with this memento. It’s the 1984 Yankees home schedule.
It should come as no surprise that the ticket prices 37 years ago were very fair especially compared to today.
At $675 per seat you could buy a field, main, mezzanine or upper box seat for the entire season.
Crazy Modern Prices
Checking the Yankee schedule of 2021, a single field level ticket to an upcoming Yankees – White Sox game costs $388.35 including Ticketmaster fees. Your seat will be in section 28. Way beyond third base in the third row. Bringing a friend doubles the cost to $776.70. That’s over $100 more than a better ticket to every game cost in 1984. Section 24 over the visitors dugout will set you back $1,000 per seat.
It would have been a stretch for me to buy a season seat in 1984 even if I wanted one. I think I could afford some of the partial plans which were reasonably priced. But why commit to so many games when you could just buy tickets to the individual games you really wanted to attend? That made much more sense.
Occasionally, I would splurge and buy great field level seats and sit in the first row right past first base. Field, main, loge and upper box seats were $9.00. Reserve seats were $7.50. Most of the time it was general admission tickets for me. Because at three bucks a seat you could sit practically anywhere in the stadium. The Yankees would draw usually no more that 24,000 fans to most of their games that year.
Oh, and if you drove to the game parking was only $3.00 at the outdoor parking lot
Which begs the question- who in their right mind spends $400 or $1,000 for a ticket to a regular baseball game? Plus you also have the added bonus of “protective netting” in front of you obscuring your view of the field. I’ll pass.
Time machine please.
Yeah, I remember going to Fenway in the late ’90s for like $20 along the foul lines. Bleachers were $12-15. Some things to keep in mind, though, is that the old Yankee Stadium held almost 25% more folks – the old capacity was 57k, the new building is only 47k. So they reduced supply. Meanwhile, as you imply, the Yanks of the mid-’80s weren’t exactly touting Murderer’s Row, so there wasn’t a sky-high demand that the ’90’s Championship teams (and those that have followed) have had. Now the Stadium is a destination for tourists, a place to bring a date to flash some cash and a way for businesses to blow some marketing cash on season tickets for “sales meetings” – which they can write off as a deduction.
So considering all that, prices increasing are to be expected. What I find borderline criminal, however, is the self-scalping of tickets: https://www.mlb.com/yankees/tickets/pricing/dynamic-pricing-faq
The Yankees (and other MLB teams, I presume) now use computer algorithms to adjust ticket prices in real-time, like airlines do. So if in late April you bought a ticket to Sat., June 19th’s afternoon game against the A’s, you probably would’ve paid less than what they’re charging now, since the A’s are currently first in their division. Hell, they’re currently charging $60-70 for *bleacher* seats for that game – twice what they’re charging for the 1:05 game the next day. Who knows why?
Meanwhile, say I pony up the $60 each for a pair of tickets today for that June 19 game, but both the Yanks and the A’s stink on ice for the next month and interest for the game drops off a cliff. The computer might cut the prices in half just to sell seats, and I’m screwed because “all sales are final.” They’ve essentially become their own StubHub, collecting their own resale up-charges.
I get charging more for weekend games and games against rivals & high-profile teams like the Red Sox, Mets and Dodgers, but they should have to post those prices by opening day and stick with them (like they used to when “premium game” pricing first started). If they want to put them on sale/offer discounts, cool, but arbitrarily jacking the prices up themselves based on an algorithm is a Wall Street vibe that sorta encapsulates everything wrong with NYC over the last 15-20 yrs.