The Yankees' rivalry with StubHub is "in midseason form," as the two sides Thursday "offered differing interpretations of the implications of the Yankees’ new policy, which adds mobile tickets and eliminates the print-at-home option," according to Neil Best of NEWSDAY. Yankees COO & General Counsel Lonn Trost, appearing on WFAN-AM's "Boomer & Carton," asserted that fans "still could transfer tickets using the popular secondary market site StubHub if StubHub were so inclined." He said, "If they don’t like to use the Yankees Ticket Exchange, they can go to StubHub." But StubHub Global Head of Communications Glenn Lehrman said that Trost is "mistaken in saying that would work with Yankees tickets." He said, "The only way we can transfer tickets is if the Yankees and Ticketmaster provide us with an API (application programming interface) feed that would allow us to do that. It’s protected, and they have not granted us access, nor have they granted anyone access. If they wanted to grant us access, this is a different conversation." Trost also reiterated that eliminating print-at-home PDF tickets "is a protection against fraud." Best notes StubHub in theory "could work around the Yankees’ system by acting merely as a matchmaker between buyer and seller, but the buyer and seller would have to execute the transfer directly" (NEWSDAY, 2/19).
EMPIRE STRIKES OUT: In N.Y., Christian Red writes Trost in trying to defend the team's new ticket policy, which is the Yankees' "latest salvo in its war with StubHub," ended up sounding "like an out-of-touch elitist." Trost: "The problem below market at a certain point is that ... you buy a ticket in a very premium location and pay a substantial amount of money. It’s not that we don’t want that fan to sell it, but that fan is sitting there having paid a substantial amount of money for a ticket and (another) fan picks it up for a buck-and-a-half and sits there, and it’s frustrating to the purchaser of the full amount." He added, "Quite frankly, the fan may be someone who has never sat in a premium location. So that’s a frustration to our existing fan base." Trost's "flub even inspired a fake Lonn Trost Twitter account, launched Thursday evening, which included the bio: 'I have experience sitting in premium locations. Yankees Chief Operating Officer'" (N.Y. DAILY NEWS, 2/19). ESPN Radio's Mike Greenberg said of Trost's comments on fans reselling premium tickets, "He explained it in the worst way possible. You couldn't have said it worse than he said it. ... I don't know how he meant that to come out." ESPN Radio’s Mike Golic added, “You know what he’s saying: ‘We don’t want some yahoo sitting there.’ … It sounds like they want walls up around those seats" ("Mike & Mike," ESPN Radio, 2/19).
