Yankees Reach Deal Making StubHub Official Ticket Reseller
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- After being at odds for years, the Yankees and StubHub are now business partners.
The team and the online ticket reseller announced a sponsorship agreement Monday that sets an advertising minimum price for resale tickets.
StubHub will become the official fan-to-fan ticket reseller for the Yankees, replacing Ticketmaster's Yankee Ticket Exchange, and will be fully operational July 7. Ticketmaster will still remain the primary ticket vendor for the Yankees.
The agreement is worth about $100 million to the team over 6½ years, a person familiar with the negotiation said. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the value was not disclosed.
Speaking at a news conference, Yankees President Randy Levine said generally the lowest price a seat can be advertised for resale will be 50 percent of what a ticket is sold for as a part of a full-season plan.
"This new product was the result of many productive discussions with StubHub, which will allow them to fully integrate into our ticket system," Levine said. "We are confident this collaboration will best protect our fans in the ticket resale marketplace."
Today, an agreement was announced naming @StubHub the official fan-to-fan ticket resale marketplace of the @Yankees pic.twitter.com/S1Qz236Los
— Yankees PR Dept. (@YankeesPR) June 27, 2016
The ticket resale service through StubHub will be fully operational on July 7 for the Yankees' July 15 game against the Boston Red Sox and will be available for the rest of the season all through mobile-only. Fans who have resale tickets posted for the July 15 game will have to repost their tickets on StubHub in order for other fans to purchase those tickets.
StubHub's deal with the Yankees is the only partnership the company has with a MLB team using a mobile-only delivery service.
"Two hundred fifty thousand mobile tickets have been used here at Yankee Stadium and are widely popular and more secure," Levine said. "Incidents of fraud are way down, and we think with this great technology StubHub has it's even going to get better."
In addition, StubHub will become a major sponsor for the Yankees and will be one of the club's top-five marketing partners, according to Levine.
"We are thrilled to provide a mobile-only technology solution for customers that are coming through StubHub.com," StubHub President Scott Cutler said.
StubHub and Yankees officials met after the announcement in February that the Yankees were eliminating print-at-home tickets. The new policy has caused lines at the team's ticket office ahead of games.
"We both reached out and had a meeting, and I realized StubHub had changed," Levine said. "There was new leadership."
The Yankees said StubHub will continue to follow their new mobile ticket policy. Paper tickets may be sold, but they will be converted to mobile format.
Levine denied the agreement has anything to do with reduced attendance at the stadium. He said the question is, "Was there and is there a way for us together to come up with a system that was even better than Yankee Ticket Exchange."
StubHub has been MLB's main ticket reseller since 2012, when the 29 other teams partnered with the eBay subsidiary. The Yankees opted out of that deal and reached an agreement with Ticketmaster, which had run Yankees Ticket Exchange since February 2013.
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