The Yankees have had a hard time convincing people to pay in excess of $1000 to watch the Yankees play the Orioles, Rangers and White Sox this season, so it will be interesting to see how successful they are when it comes to selling seats that other people used to watch the Yankees play the same teams.
On Tuesday, the team, via memorabilia partner Steiner Sports, will announce the price for seats at the old Yankee Stadium. The seats aren't quite ready for sale yet, they need to be checked for lead paint and stripped clean if any is found, but it promises to be quite a boon to the Yankee coffers.
They'll pay the city $11.5 million for the seats, lockers, foul poles and letters from the Yankee Stadium sign, among other items, and will take in much, much more when they're sold to the public. There are 54,888 seats, according to the Daily News, which means they'd need to sell for just over $200 each for the Yankees to recoup the purchase price. They'll go on the market at a much higher price, though.
The Mets sold seats from Shea for $869 a pair, and Darren Rovell of CNBC (and common sense) predicts that the Yankee seats will fetch a higher price. Just as a point of comparison, when the old joint closed for renovations in 1974, the seats sold for $7.50 and five empty packs of Winston cigarettes. You can do the math yourself on how many packs of cigarettes you'd need to have these days, but it would likely mean a quick death via lung cancer.
Throw in all the other goodies and it wouldn't be shocking to see the Yankees pull in more than $50 million. Not a bad return from a Stadium that the team couldn't possibly have stomached for another season.
Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City and is a contributor to FanHouse.com and ProFootballTalk.com in addition to his duties for NBCNewYork.com.
