Manny Baez shows printout of tickets he bought online.
By Ian-Carlos De La Cruz
The New York Yankees may be one of baseball’s most successful franchises — both on the field and at the box office — but did you know you could take a family of four to a game at the stadium for under 40 bucks?
That includes the subway fare.
“I had never been to Yankee Stadium ‘till my cousin suggested we should go,” said Manny Baez, 24. “Two hours later, for a total price of $81, nine of us were at the game.” Sites such as StubHub.com and Encoreticketstore.com bring fans back to the day when, as 54-year-old cab driver Luis Garcia said, you were “able to grab good seats for 12 bucks.”
To put things into perspective, here’s a quick price match:
Start with primo locations: A single Field 123 MVP ticket in row 30 for a recent game with the Toronto Blue Jays went for $325 on Yankees.com. StubHub.com offered a ticket a few seats to the right for $106. Meanwhile, Encoreticketstore.com moved you up to the 16th row of the same area for $149.
But get this: Going into the first weekend of June, upper deck or bleacher seats for an upcoming series between the Bronx Bombers and the Red Sox –- perhaps the biggest rivalry in all sports — were going for as little as $9. Dozens of seats were still priced at under $25 for all three games in the series, which begins Tuesday, June 7.
Yankee Stadium cost $1.5 billion to build. With it came great expectations for an organization that makes most of its money from television and merchandising. As far as actually putting fannies in the seats, as the late George Steinbrenner once called his business, fans can actually do better online than by locking into ticket plans. (We’re not talking about ticket brokers, who buy seats and sell them for more than their face value. Stubhub.com and others like it are merely marketplaces for ticket holders to sell off what they can’t use.)
Some say they passed on season tickets this year for that very reason. Others who found out too late say they won’t get fooled again.
“This is the last year that I will be a season-ticket holder,” said Joselvi Rodriguez, a 26-year-old die-hard fan. “I paid around 500 bucks for terrace level seats, its [expletive]. I could just go on StubHub or Encoreticketstore.com and get way better tickets for the games that I can actually go to.” Call it what you will – a home run, a grand slam. In the end, tickets from reputable re-selling sites are a steal.
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