eBay’s (EBAY) StubHub Scores Home Run With Yankees

Beginning July 15th, eBay owned StubHub will have something really big to smile about. The ticket resale partner has been chosen by the New York Yankees to be be the team’s reseller. This is a $100 million deal that will last six-and-a-half years.
“Many more fans will now have access to tickets,” says a StubHub spokesperson.

It was in 2012 when the MLB named StubHub as its official resale partner, but both the Yankees and the Los Angeles Angels opted out to stick with Ticketmaster.

The New York Yankees’ official resale partner was Ticketmaster, on a site called Yankees Ticket Exchange. StubHub has now replaced that site.

The Yankees were able to set a “floor” (minimum price rule) price on their tickets under their old deal. This let them have control over their pricing.

Under the new StubHub deal, there is still a floor, and no ceiling. The Yankees and StubHub are referring to this floor as “Minimum Advertised List Pricing by Section,” and it is 50% of the season ticket-holder price.

The Yankees also announced that this season, for the first time, that the team has banned print-at-home tickets. This means that if you bought your ticket from someone else, you could not print it out or even pull the PDF onto your phone or e-mail. The Yankees wont accept either. You have to pull up the Ticketmaster app on your phone and get the Ticketmaster QR code to get into the game.

With the new StubHub deal, the policy will remain and only mobile tickets will be accepted. The Yankees are now the sole MLB team with mobile-only ticketing. Sellers may be able to post hard-copy tickets for sale, but StubHub will convert them into mobile tickets after the sale.

To date, 250,000 fans have used mobile tickets, and the Yankees now expect the switch to mobile-only will result in 600,000 mobile tickets used by the end of this season. This will be a record number.

Yankees president Randy Levine has said in a statement that this deal now provides Yankees fans with “a first-class ticket experience.”

A StubHub spokesperson has said, “there’s no need to ever deal with the guys in front of the stadium [scalpers] anymore. You could literally get on the line with no ticket and by the time you’re up front, you’ve bought a ticket.”

Disclaimer: We have no position in eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) and have not been compensated for this article.