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Yankees-StubHub Deal Includes Resale Price Floor Allowing Team To Protect Brand

Yankees President Randy Levine yesterday said that the club’s six-plus-year ticket resale partnership with StubHub would not have been possible prior to last year’s appointment of company President Scott Cutler. The deal, containing financial guarantees worth in excess of $100M, was largely forged early this year in meetings led by Levine and Cutler following the club’s installation of a ban on print-at-home tickets. “It was clear this was a very different StubHub now,” Levine said, adding Cutler was somebody with “credibility and honor.” StubHub’s integration with the club begins July 7 and is based entirely around mobile. Levine called print-at-home tickets “obsolete” and said the club’s new policy has brought fraud rates down significantly. StubHub will become one of the team’s five largest corporate sponsors. The deal also paves the way for the club to opt back into a league-level StubHub partnership and will lead to the closure of StubHub’s Last Minute Service Center near Yankee Stadium. The deal contains an effective price floor, which calls for a minimum listing of the full season ticket price for that section, divided by 81 games and then divided again by half. StubHub has resisted any sort of restrictions, floors or ceilings around pricing, but Cutler said the net effect to consumers as a result of the pricing policy would be minimal. “One of my key priorities has been to be a better partner throughout the industry,” Cutler said. The deal marks StubHub’s only MLB team-level integration for mobile-only delivery (Eric Fisher, Staff Writer). The WALL STREET JOURNAL's Jared Diamond writes, "After years of tension and acrimony, the Yankees and StubHub have kissed and made up." Ticketmaster will "remain the Yankees’ primary ticket seller" (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 6/28).

EXCHANGE RATE: In N.Y., Seth Berkman notes fans who do not sell tickets for the team's July 15 home game by July 7 on the Yankees Ticket Exchange "will have to re-list them on StubHub," which will have the price floor. The agreement "comes as the Yankees have been struggling on the field, and attendance has dropped by more than 65,000 fans over all from this point a year ago." Whether this new agreement "helps the Yankees sell more tickets for the rest of the season remains to be seen." Cutler said that StubHub in effect was now "taking into account how much the Yankees valued their brand and how strongly they believed it was threatened by huge markdowns in ticket prices" (N.Y. TIMES, 6/28). Cutler said that of the 51,000 seats currently on the resale market "only about 100 would be impacted by the price policy Levine described" (NEWSDAY, 6/28).

BAD DEAL FOR FANS? YAHOO FINANCE's Daniel Roberts wrote under the header, "Why The New York Yankees' Switch To StubHub Is A Bad Deal For Fans." He wrote, "Make no mistake: This move has very little to do with catering to customers." The team "is bad and the stadium is never full, but the Yankees still don’t want anyone getting into a game cheaply." StubHub confirmed that the new system "does not apply to NYCFC." The Yankee Stadium print-at-home ticketing ban began this year "with the first NYCFC game of the season, and it was a complete disaster" (FINANCE.YAHOO.com, 6/27).

GETTING DEFENSIVE: The TIMES' Berkman writes Levine can be a "feisty defender" of his team's on-field performance, and he "seemed in a particularly combative mood" yesterday when talking about the Yankees’ struggles. In reference to media members, Levine said, "When we decide to become sellers -- if we decide to become sellers -- or if we decide to become buyers, you’ll know about it. But I guess the difference is, most of you guys have never run anything, and we have a lot of history here of knowing what we’re doing, a lot of confidence in our baseball operations people. So we’ll see what happens. All the rest of it right now is just noise" (N.Y. TIMES, 6/28). In N.Y., Christian Red writes under the header, "Yankees President Randy Levine Gets Prickly With Media" (N.Y. DAILY NEWS, 6/28).

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