Empty Seats? Or the End of the World?

Last night was the first game of the World Series between the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies.

Some of you are unbelievably excited about this, and some of you want to douse your eyeballs in acid to avoid reading anything else about it.

But stick with me, and don’t do the acid-dousing thing.  It’s never as good an idea as it seems at the time.

Last night was Game 1 of the World Series, which is an occasion for pomp and circumstance.  Presidents or Presidential families attend, bunting is hung, ceremony is made.  And when you add to that the fact that this game 1 happens to be in the shiny new Yankee Stadium with baseball’s flagship team back in the Championship for the first time in years, all signs point to a big night.

In that case, why were there so many empty seats right behind home plate?

Many a freak-out was had over this, including Michael Fitzpatrick’s lament that it was a “sad day” for baseball that World Series tickets were not sold out.

ESPN’s extremely popular Colin Cowherd used the empty seats as an opportunity to suggest that people don’t like to go to games anymore because they can watch them at home. (In fact, he went on to suggest, bizarrely, that only poor people want to watch games in person and people with money can buy a big-screen TV and therefore prefer to watch them at home.  Hmmm.  I think it’s possible his HDTV isn’t the only thing projecting at the Cowherd home.)

Sorry, Colin, but the facts just don’t back you up.  Baseball had another excellent sales year, despite the recession and high prices for tickets.  Why?  Because, contrary to your view that being able to see the nostril hairs of your favorite pitcher on a 50″ screen is what seeing the game is all about, people actually like to go to games, just as they like to go see things live on a stage.

Why?  Because sitting around the house, however gigantically equipped it might be with a television, is boring compared to actually participating in life.

So then, why unsold seats?

Well, paint, meet corner.

The seats most visible on TV at Yankee Stadium are the so-called “Legends” seats, which you might recall started life costing $2600 apiece.

Do I even have to say that that was a pricing mistake?  The idea that a single seat for a single baseball game should cost $2600 (and that a whole section should be priced at this level) is, well, absurd.  As you know, I believe strongly in the “value capture” of live entertainment.  That is, prices for tickets have risen because people value the live experience more.

But the laws of economics are kinda like laws of nature: you can’t fool the marketplace.  These tickets were badly overpriced, and to their credit, the Yankees recognized it and dropped them.

To $1250.

Still too high.

So mostly, the section sat at least partly empty all year, but now, of course, when the rest of the stadium goes up in price (because of the World Series), those tickets are just too expensive for a market to exist for them.  The Yankees might have felt that it’s better to absorb the unsold tickets than admit defeat on the question of the value of those seats, and that’s why they’re painted into this corner.  Unfortunately, it’s a corner (of the stadium) that’s on camera during the whole game.  D’oh.

But is that a reflection on baseball itself?  Or of the interest in the general public on getting out of their houses and snuggies and into a game or show?

No, it’s not.  It’s a reflection of the fact that among the many excellent marketing decisions the Yankees have made over the years, this one was a poor decision, and they probably didn’t reverse themselves aggressively enough.

To prove it, let’s do a little mental exercise:

If unsold seats behind home plate mean that everyone’s becoming a couch potato and the Yankees drop the price of those tickets to $300 tomorrow (whereupon they would all sell out), does this mean there’s been a sudden reversal of societal trends?

OR suppose a meteor destroyed the new Yankee Stadium and the next game had to be played in the Brooklyn Cyclones’ home park (which holds just 6500).  In that case, there would be a waiting list 10 deep for tickets.

Or suppose simply that the new Yankee Stadium had been built a little smaller, like most of the new Stadiums over the last few years.

In all of those cases, no empty seats.

Demand for live baseball, as for anything else of quality that’s live, is still robust, even in cruddy economic conditions.  Why? Because it has value.

The Yankees have shown, though, that it doesn’t have INIFINITE value, even during the World Series.