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The price of watching a fraction of Yankees games dropped to a fraction of its original cost yesterday, with obstructed-view bleacher seats abruptly falling from $12 per game to $5.

Lonn Trost, the team’s chief operating officer, made the announcement during an interview on WFAN. The ticket price applies to about 600 seats on either side of a sports bar that extends to the centerfield wall.

“Those seats are being sold at $5, not $12,” he said. “I think some seats may have gone out improperly invoiced. Those are going to be corrected, but those 600 seats are going to be $5.”

Trost was not asked about the timing or rationale for the change and did not return a call seeking further explanation.

In an interview with Newsday Monday, he said of the obstructed-view seats, “We had a choice of selling it to somebody or not. … For $12, it’s a choice of taking it or not.”

The seating chart on the Yankees’ Web site also indicated those seats cost $12.

Holders of $5 tickets will have access to other parts of the stadium. Trost told WFAN the tickets would be labeled as having obstructed views.

“When we built the sports bar we knew architecturally there is an architectural shadow,” he said. “And that means there are a group of seats that are in the bleachers that if you are sitting very close to either the rightfield or leftfield side of the sports bar, you may not see the opposite side.

“We knew that going in, and to that extent we pre-prepared to put televisions in the wall, as well as that big screen so you don’t miss anything.”

Trost also said the team will open its most expensive seats - of which only about 70 percent have been sold - to partial season plans. He suggested those tickets might have been priced lower if the process had been concluded after the worst of the economic downturn.

“We certainly would have considered the economy, and that’s why some of the seats, we recognize, haven’t been sold,” he said.

Trost said he believes in some cases companies or individuals that can afford premium seats have not purchased them for fear simply of being seen in them during the current economic malaise.

He said the Yankees have sold all but “parts of seven” suites out of 51, some of which will be sold on a “per diem” basis for companies that do not want full season suite plans

Posted in Yankee News |

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