Fancy new stadiums may wall out fans - AMNew York

Source: AMNewYork
By: Michael Y. Park

Two new baseball stadiums will grace the city in 2009, but experts and fans expect average Joes to be squeezed out as the Yankees and Mets move into those sleek but smaller homes.

Shea Stadium currently holds 55,601 seats, while the new Citi Field will hold about 44,000, or 20 percent fewer seats. Tickets generally run from $9 to around $100 at Shea. The House that Ruth Built, meanwhile, holds 57,000 seats, but its billion-dollar replacement will hold between 50,000 and 54,000. Tickets cost anywhere from $12 to $400.

So many baseball fans in New York have been feeling shunned ever since they found out the fancy new ballparks would have fewer regular seats but likely more luxury boxes. That means ticket prices will almost certainly go up, full-season ticket holders may get consigned to worse seats, and partial-season ticket holders may lose their tickets altogether.

"You're going to make a hell of a lot more money selling suites and premium seats than off seats that are upper-level and general average fans just coming buying tickets," says Robert Tuchman, president of TSE Sports & Entertainment, which sells sports packages to corporations. "It's going to be hard on the average fan who doesn't have access to higher-priced seating."

Officially, spokesmen for both teams say that it's far too early to begin debating the situation in the new fields because prices aren't even close to being settled yet. (A Mets spokesman says the team's in dialogue with fans; a Yankees spokesman says he doesn't see why that would be necessary.) But experts say that higher prices and less room for average fans are a certainty, and follow the general trend in sports.

And, when push comes to shove, devoted fans just aren't as valuable as other clientele, according to Don Vaccaro, chief executive of TicketLiquidator.com. When people like Goldman and Kaplan stay away from the stadiums more often, it's actually good for the ballclubs' long-term bottom lines, he says.

Every expert offers a warning to Yankees and Mets management, though. Corporate boxes and premium seats are great when the team's doing well, they note, but corporations are notoriously fair-weather fans. When a team's in the doldrums, it's the loyalest fans, like Goldman and Kaplan, who keep teams from disappearing altogether.

But some fans insist they see a silver lining.

"Mets fans have long felt like second-class baseball citizens in this town, and it's fantastic they're finally being given the state-of-the-art ballpark they deserve," says David Koeppel, a journalist who grew up idolizing Tom Seaver. "I'd really hoped the stadium would be named for Jackie Robinson or Gil Hodges, and not for its corporate sponsor, but it could have been worse. At least it's not called Giuliani Field."