Going to the box office to pick up tickets for sports, movies, plays, etc. is basically a thing of the past. Most people either print out their tickets at home or have them at the ready on their phones. The New York Yankees, forever in touch with the marketplace, have decided to not allow print-at-home tickets to be used at Yankee Stadium anymore, for reasons that seem dubious at best.
The Yankees say they’re no longer accept the home-printed tickets to “further combat fraud and counterfeiting of tickets associated with print-at-home paper tickets (PDFs)”, but this has ulterior motives that have little to do with fraud, even though ticketing fraud is a big problem these days.
Fans now can receive the normal stock tickets or opt into a mobile phone plan, of which the Yankees say in bold text, “You will need to bring your phone to the game.” Thanks for the info, guys, really appreciate it.
So why might the Yankees eliminate an incredibly simple way of getting tickets to fans, other than the public line of combating fraud? The Yankees have an iron-clad partnership with Ticketmaster, and a scalding hot hatred of Stubhub. As the state of New York has recently been trying to fight the process of price gouging, particularly by Ticketmaster, eliminating print-at-home tickets is one way of sweeping the rug out from under Stubhub, whose primary method of delivering tickets is via PDF.
And, naturally, Stubhub prices are way cheaper than buying them for face value from the Yankees themselves, so this move does nothing other than stuff the pockets of the Yankees and Ticketmaster, prices more fans out of Yankee Stadium, and only increases the number of blue seats visible on TV.
But its not like the Yankees are hurting for money, right? If you want to check out the rest of their updated policy, you can do so here.
Comments are closed.