A lot of fans are understandably angry at the Yankees’ latest attempt to deny people who want to attend their games the opportunity to buy tickets in a fair market. Today, the team sent chief operating officer Lonn Trost to WFAN so that he could try and quell some of the discontent. He did not help.




Here’s what Trost had to say when he was asked why the Yankees insist on making fans buy tickets on Ticketmaster, which uses artificial price floors, instead of StubHub, which allows tickets to be sold at fair market value (via Newsday.com):

“The problem below market at a certain point is that if 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.” Trost then added a comment that raised eyebrows on social media because of its seemingly elitist undertones. “And quite frankly,” he said, “the fan may be someone who has never sat in a premium location. So that’s a frustration to our existing fan base.”


Yes, that second quote means exactly what you think it means. Trost is really out here saying that the team doesn’t want the kind of riff-raff that buys cheap tickets on StubHub mixing with rich fans who pay full price to sit in the same section. The Yankees would much rather have those unwanted seats remain empty, so as to prevent the rich folk from having to mix with dirty poors.

[Newsday]