Record Low Attendance at Yankee Stadium; Modified Lineup

Most of the people who wanted to go to check out the new stadium probably got their shot by now. The weather hasn’t exactly been wonderful. It’s still incredibly expensive to go to a game when you consider all the factors.

All that said, I’m going to Friday’s game and i’m amped!

It’s “A League of Their Own” five times. He loves that movie.

Oh, wait…

I understand the costs involved in the game…

I say the same thing to everyone that asks me though. My seats cost $15 a piece (up from $12). I understand if you can’t afford that , especially if you note that it costs me more to GET to the stadium. Also I don’t go to a baseball game to eat dinner; I go to watch the game. That means I either eat before or after. Every time i’ve eaten hotdogs at yankees stadium I’ve gotten massively sick. Plus the “kabobs” outside the stadium are infinitely more tasty, no matter what they’re actually made of. I think its understandable if you’re only going to 1 or 2 games each year to go all out and eat at the hard rock but you also have to remember that the planning for this stadium happened before wallstreet and the economy went boom so its understandable that they’re looking to grow into the cost. The Yankees could play in front of zero people and still make a billion dollars each year. And again if I’m paying $15 for each of my two seats I can’t imagine that “people can’t afford to go”. You just need to be judicial if that’s the $15 you need to eat and whether the other $50 you want to spend on tickets is better spent elsewhere…including at the McD’s outside the stadium.

By the 7th inning, there weren’t 20,000 left. Those that never showed or left did so because of the weather, I assume.

There is definitely price point resistance to tickets- the empty seats are the expensive ones. The cheaper seats are full. When the top seats were $2500 in 2009 they went begging and the empty seats behind the plate in every camera shot were just plain embarassing. They lowered the prices somewhat for those seats last year, and they usually looked half full.

On the other hand, I understand that parking is now $35. The Yankees, like a lot of pro sports, are pricing themselves right out of the market. The blowback will really come in about ten years when they wonder why the kids don’t give a crap about the team anymore. The answer will be that they could never afford to see a game, so why should they care what happens in a stadium they’ve never been inside of?

Fifteen years ago, I took my kids to Saturday games, bought the upper deck behind home plate for about $15 per seat, and parked for about $10. We would drive from RI at least three times a year. No more.