I Stand Corrected

Maybe I spoke too soon about the NFL being the first pro sports’ league to go belly up.  The New York Times today did a story on the Yankees, who have seen their ticket and luxury suite revenue drop by 42 percent, or $166 million, since Yankee Stadium III opened in 2009.  The story offered two possible reasons for the decline.

For openers, there’s the cost of going to a game, or, as one analyst put it, Yankees’ management “priced a perennial contending team into their tickets and suites.”  What happens is, once a team stops winning, their “aggressive pricing” strategy can bite back bigtime.

Related to this is the realization offered by Yankees’ managing partner Hal Steinbrenner, who said, “Baseball I think, has somewhat struggled with the millennial [fan] problem.”  And guess what?  Millennials are in the habit of deciding on their purchases at the last second, so forget about offering season-ticket packages to them.  Oh, and they like bargains.  Hence, the bite-back of “aggressive pricing.”

From my perspective, here’s the good news in this so-called millennial problem—diminished attention span.  The game may have to pick up its pace to maintain the interest of its younger fan base.  Any thoughts, Commissioner Manfred?