Far From Cheap Seats

Prices for Premium Baseball Tickets Are on the Rise

NEW YORK -- If this were only about baseball, the old stadium at the corner of 161st Street and River Avenue would continue serving perfectly as it has for 85 years, 39 World Series and 26 championships. If this were only about baseball, a new Yankee Stadium wouldn't be rising majestically across Macombs Dam Park, a vision that dances in the eye of the Yankees Chief Operating Officer Lonn Trost, who often likens the building to "a five-star hotel" with a ballfield in the middle.

But instead Trost stood one recent evening in a conference room on the doomed old Yankee Stadium's second level urging a visitor to experience the inexpressible comfort of a seat for the new ballpark -- a chair so loaded with special blue cushioning and trimmed with teak armrests that it looked almost incapable of folding itself back up.

"Feel," Trott urged his visitor as the man sat in the chair.

Outside, another 49,000 people settled into the old stadium, with its tight seats and glaring lack of class distinction between sections. In today's baseball a facility such as this won't suffice, which is why Trost was proudly displaying his new stadium seat. When installed in the new Yankee Stadium's front row it will cost its occupant $2,500 a game, a figure so astounding it makes the seats radiating down the foul lines seem like a relative steal at $850 and $650 each.

Not that the purchasers will even need to sit in them. This is because the Yankees are also offering a package of amenities that include a martini bar, a museum, Internet protocol televisions, party suites, conference rooms and a concierge to secure dinner reservations or find theater tickets. All this and an art gallery, too.

"Are we going to charge 5,000 people a lot to go to the game?" Trost asked. "Yeah, but we will deliver."

As big money changes baseball, pushing salaries ever higher, the fan baseball is trying to attract is changing, too. A generation of new stadiums with the latest in innovations has allowed teams to transform the old box seat into an entertainment palace, essentially moving the luxury suite to the field level, bumping families for corporations.

Baseball, with its long seasons and large stadiums, has traditionally been a cheaper alternative to basketball, football and hockey. Now, suddenly, the game has leapt over a three-figure threshold for tickets once considered unfathomable. When Nationals Park opened this spring, many fans were stunned to learn that it would cost $170 to $325 to sit in the lower deck between the dugouts.

In just the last year, the average ticket price has gone up 10.1 percent, according to Team Marketing Report, a newsletter that covers the business of sports. Much of that increase is due to a rise of prices in club seating sections that significantly drive up the cost of a stadium's best seats. This season, six teams, including the Nationals, will have an average premium ticket price of more than $100, and the league average for club seats is up to $76.26, according to Team Marketing Report.

"It has become an event to go to a game," said Jon Greenberg, the newsletter's executive editor. "Especially with teams like the Red Sox, the Yankees and the Cubs, fans won't go several times a year anymore. Now families go once a year and make it a big special day at the ballpark."

A New Era

By the time Major League Baseball moved the Montreal Expos to Washington, it was apparent a new era had arrived. The men hired by the league to run the team understood this. Some had seen it firsthand, including Kevin Uhlich, who was named the team's executive vice president. In a previous stop in Anaheim, he helped develop the concept of dugout suites, where the highest-paying fans could retreat to a restaurant beneath the stands and have a view of the batting cages under the stands.

Armed with these memories and drawing upon a generation of new ballparks around baseball, Uhlich had the architects add as many high-end facilities as the stadium would take, ensuring that when it opened this spring, it would have the latest in expensive entertainment. In went the Presidents Club, a restaurant for patrons in the first 10 rows behind home plate with a view not only of the batting cages but a new feature: the news conference room. Then he added another section of exclusive seating stretching to the back of the lower section, also with a separate dining area and a picnic patio that proved popular in Anaheim.