
What’s the Matter with Baseball? - awnird
https://deadspin.com/whats-the-matter-with-baseball-1837585854
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masonic

      We’ve so far seen the attendance dip blamed on high ticket prices
    

Generally, it's never been _cheaper_ (in real dollars) to get in the door.
Resale prices are artificially suppressed, and teams are offering more
aggressive discounts on direct sales than ever.

MLB's deal making StubHub, a marketplace with no meaningful price floors, its
official resale marketplace has been an economic disaster from which MLB will
never recover.

Most games become a mad race to the bottom for prices as the game approaches,
as buyers have learned to wait for the inevitable collapse. Result #1: few
advance sales. Result #2: season ticket holders abandon their seats rather
than take major losses every year. Result #3: taking advantage of kickbacks
from StubHub to teams, now teams dump their own inventory on StubHub at fire-
sale prices. Result #4: buyers kearn to not buy directly from teams, given the
much cheaper inventory on StubHub. Result #5: even fewer advance sales and
more abandonment of seats by season ticket holders. It's a death spiral.

The teams' only hope will be to opt out of the StubHub deal and use only
resale marketplaces that have appropriate price floors (that vary with
original ticket cost) and stop the predatory practice of competing with their
own season ticket holders with heavily discounted tickets in official resale
marketplaces.

Also, teams have to quit friction-heavy ticketing procedures such as mobile-
only ticketing and punitive entry procedures.

