$400 for a Day at the Ballpark? Taxpayers helped George Steinbrenner raise ticket prices

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The Steinbrenner and Wilpon families have only themselves to blame for embarrassing attendance. Yes, there's a recession on, but there's a recession on in Arizona, too. This year, according to the Team Marketing Report's Fan Cost Index, a family of four can count on spending $410.88 to see a Yankees home game. That's an increase of slightly more than 49% from last year. In Arizona, a family of four would spend only $114.29 to see the Diamondbacks play in Phoenix -- down 29.8% from 2008.

This is the free market, the natural result of supply and demand. What the Mets and Yankees were counting on was a market that they would be free to manipulate. New York City has the biggest fan base in the country to draw on. However, these teams deliberately built smaller parks. The new Yankee stadium has about 5,000 fewer seats than the old one. The Mets' new Citi Field has 15,000 fewer seats than Shea Stadium. The strategy was to tell the fans, "Hey, how can you blame us for charging more for these tickets? There's fewer of them and they're more in demand." Except that they're not so much in demand.

You'll want to read the whole article.