How can you work at Yankee Stadium?

Yankee Stadium(s) economics?

• I've been thinking about this recently, but I don't know the numbers. The new Yankee Stadium hasn't sold out a game since opening day this year, and the logical speculation is that their ticket prices are too high. According to Wikipedia, the new stadium seats 52,325, and the old stadium could seat 56,936 (in 2008). http://espn.go.com/mlb/teams/schedule?team=nyy has the attendance for each game in the right column. Interesting that the home opener "sell out" only had 48,271...maybe ESPN's numbers are the number of fans who came through the gate? There were definitely empty seats during that game, but maybe they WERE sold. Some number-crunching shows that they're averaging 45,065 per home game. Compare that to last year's average of 52,928 per home game. I'm assuming that the more expensive ticket prices at the new stadium probably make up the difference in money, and then some. But what I'm wondering is this -- does anyone know roughly how many tickets need to be sold in the new stadium to bring in the same amount of money as a sell out in the old stadium? [not considering concessions/souvenirs...just tickets] Thanks!

• Answer:

  The ticket prices have clearly gone up and driven the attendance down. But you have to consider a few things in your comparisons. First is that the 52,928 average last year was also during the last year of that Stadium, which did drive the average attendance up higher than its ever been (to the best of my knowledge). They average about 93% attendance last year, which is practically unheard of for many MLB teams. The new stadium is averaging about 86% attendance, a more down-to-earth number, but like you mentioned, its mostly because of the prices.. Id say if you looked at the average attendances versus the price of tickets, they are probably bringing in the same ticket revenue despite the lack of attendance this year