Yankees, Comcast Engage In Public Pissing Match Because They're Incapable Of Adult Negotiations

from the Titanic-deck-chair-rearranging dept

For many years now we've seen a dramatic spike in programming contract disputes between broadcasters and cable operators, usually resulting in consumers losing access to TV content they're paying for. These feuds usually begin simply enough; with a broadcaster asking for a programming rate hike cable operators don't want to pay for. But instead of sitting down and hashing out a new deal that satisfies both parties like grown ups often do, the companies take their feud into the public sphere, punishing paying customers in the process.

This involves blacking out content users are paying for (without giving any refunds), annoying customers with ads and on-screen tickers blaming the other guy for being a greedy villain, sometimes cutting off user access to online content, and making an endless series of snippy comments in the media. After months of annoying customers, the two sides will usually strike a confidential deal, and the rate hike will get passed on to consumers whose cable bills are already skyrocketing at four times the rate of inflation. It is, to be kind, an unsustainable death spiral of dysfunction given the looming threat of Internet video.

The latest fight of this kind is between Comcast and the Fox and Yankees-owned YES Network. Comcast pulled the network from its lineup last November after YES asked for a 33% rate bump. Comcast has spent the last few months publicly complaining that nobody watched the network. YES Network has spent the last few months calling Comcast gutless, and with the new baseball season approaching has launched a new ad campaign using Yankees players like Alex Rodriguez and a new website that urges customers to switch to another cable operator while mocking Comcast:

"The most recent American Consumer Satisfaction Index ranks Comcast among the lowest of the more than 300 companies it tracks, calling out Comcast Xfinity for suffering one of the largest drops in customer satisfaction in the pay-TV industry. In a 2015 poll conducted jointly by 24/7 Wall St. and Zogby Analytics, Comcast finished dead last for the second straight year in terms of quality of customer service among 151 of America’s best-known companies across fifteen industries...Now Comcast is depriving fans of watching Yankees games on YES, even as it continues to force price hikes on its customers and charge more money for less service."

The problem is that with the amount of money broadcasters are demanding, and the apathetic, dysfunctional nature of cable companies (Comcast is a broadcaster itself no stranger to rate hikes), these are feuds many people wish both sides could somehow lose. Again, customers are paying for content they're not getting, being refused refunds, being harassed with on and off screen marketing, and -- once Comcast and YES strike a secret deal just before the first pitch is thrown -- customers will be pounded with a shiny new rate hike anyway. Regulators have thus far responded by implying these fights are just boys being boys.

It would be in the cable and broadcast industry's best self interest to get these deals done without pissing off any more customers, but the industry's incapable of seeing the bigger picture. Such as the fact these fights only accelerate piracy streams, cord cutting, and the downward-sliding satisfaction ratings of the least liked industry in America.

Filed Under: baseball, carriage, tv, yankees, yes network
Companies: comcast, yankees

Yankees' Dumb Ticket Policy Turns Soccer Match At Yankee Stadium Into A Ghost Town

from the papers-please dept

You may recall that we discussed the New York Yankees' bumbling attempt to institute a new ticket policy for Yankee Stadium that disallowed print-at-home tickets. Dressed up as a policy designed to combat fake tickets being sold by scalpers, the policy was actually designed to be a warm hug to the team's partner Ticketmaster and a slap to Ticketmaster rival StubHub, as well as all of the other secondary market resellers out there. Still, some people probably shrugged, assuming that this would only have an effect on Yankees fans, a group that might find the soil of sympathy barren.

But of course that assumption isn't true. Aside from representing a potentially virulent precedent that could be adopted by other teams, the Yankees aren't the only team that plays in Yankee Stadium. The local soccer (football) team, New York City FC, not only plays there as well, but the team hosted a match recently, and that match was likewise governed by the new ticket policy. So, how'd that work out exactly?

Thanks to member [Albany] for the pic. 8 minutes out! pic.twitter.com/wqaKJ9UmQ2

— NYCFC Forums (@NYCFCForums) March 13, 2016

Now, it's a bit confusing from the tweet, but that picture was taken shortly before the match was to begin, during warmups. It was not, as some had interpreted, taken with eight minutes left in the game. Which isn't to say that the results of the new ticket policy were anything short of disastrous.

Entry to the @NYCFC game at @Yankees Stadium is a DISASTER. Everyone in line has a paper ticket and is being turned away. @YankeesPR — Daniel Roberts (@readDanwrite) March 13, 2016

Yankee Stadium doesn't care about its customers, the ticket-holders. overtly disrespects them. @Yankees @NYCFC pic.twitter.com/pQOCmT0Jud

— Daniel Roberts (@readDanwrite) March 13, 2016

And the Deadspin post has a rolling series of tweets, including more pictures of crowded lines of pissed off fans, with reports that getting in was a massive problem, fans were being turned away, and everyone involved was generally aggravated.

Now, some will retreat back to the safety of the assertion that any new policy will breed some confusion and take time before all things go seamlessly. And, hey, that's true. However, this fustercluck also is a wonderful reminder of just how full of crap the Yankees were when they rolled out this policy. Were fraud to be a massive issue in need of addressing, why then is there so much overwhelming demand from fans for the use of print-at-home tickets? If the secondary market were a cesspool of fraud and abuse, that demand would cease to be. Yet, there was so much of that demand for this NYCFC match, that the ticket gates were mobbed by the angry. Not the best of starts for a fan-friendly ticket policy, methinks...

Filed Under: baseball, lines, printing tickets, secondary market, soccer, tickets
Companies: yankees

NY Yankees Do Fans A 'Favor' By Preventing Them From Printing Their Tickets At Home

from the evil-empire dept

As an avid sports fan, and more specifically an avid baseball fan, I can still remember the advent of home-printed tickets. My reaction was perhaps more elation than what was warranted, but having spent years going up to the Wrigley Field box office with my father and later my friends, the idea of being able to purchase tickets online and then print them at home in order to bypass the lines and go directly to the gate was exactly the kind of technological progress that, albeit small, meant something to me.

And now I'm apparently the right age to be witness to this very practice being rolled back in favor of mobile device tickets. Except, as we review exactly what the New York Yankees are doing in no longer allowing the use of print-at-home tickets, it seems clear that the team is doing this as a hamfisted attempt at controlling the secondary ticket market.

The team's pitch to its fans via its updated ticket policy tries to position this move as one to combat fraud, of course.

As the Yankees are continuously striving to implement technological advances to provide our fans with a ticketing experience that is unparalleled, convenient, safe and secure, the Yankees are excited to announce, as a complement to traditional hard stock paper tickets, the availability of mobile ticketing for the 2016 baseball season. Print-at-home paper tickets (PDFs) are being discontinued so as to further combat fraud and counterfeiting of tickets associated with print-at-home paper tickets (PDFs). In addition to traditional hard stock paper tickets, the Yankees will be offering the opportunity for fans to receive mobile tickets on a fan's Smartphone.

This certainly sounds good as a pitch, and there is little doubt that huxters selling fake printed tickets outside of the ballpark is indeed a pain in the ass. But just how big of a problem is it? The Yankees certainly aren't saying, likely because that pitch isn't really what this is all about. Via the analysis at Deadspin:

The Yankees would have you believe that eliminating print-at-home tickets is entirely motivated by a desire to prevent fraud, but the reality is that it has everything to do with the team’s partnership with Ticketmaster and ongoing war against StubHub. When ticket resellers use StubHub, they can sell the ticket for as little as they’d like, but Ticketmaster sets artificial price floors that prevent sellers from listing tickets below face value. This practice has recently been called out by the New York Attorney General, as it deprives fans the opportunity to buy tickets on a fair market.

The Yankees’ wish to avoid the realities of supply and demand is the reason the team touts Ticketmaster as its official resale partner, and this new anti-PDF policy is a blatant attempt at further undercutting StubHub. The Yankees can’t force anyone to use Ticketmaster instead of StubHub, but it can make using the latter a much bigger pain in the ass by eliminating printable tickets.

And so what was a pitch to combat fraud to benefit the customer devolves instead into the strong-arming of the customer to eliminate secondary market pricing. This sort of anti-competitive practice is an interesting move for an organization in a marketplace that relies heavily on having butts-in-seats in order to sell all kinds of other merchandise: team apparel, food, drink, mementos, etc. What the secondary market does for teams is, when the team is performing poorly or when ticket prices are out of line with demand, still allow those seats to be filled by fans buying at a lower price. Fans who still spend more money at the games than an empty seat would. The risk for the Yankees in this move isn't only alienating and pissing off its fans, there is a true monetary risk as well if games end up with empty seats that would otherwise have been filled.

How much risk is this for a team like the Yankees that is so bursting with popularity? Probably not high, but it isn't nil either. Meanwhile, the only benefit in the move for the team is building on the relationship with Ticketmaster by making the partner happy. I'm struggling to understand the calculus the team did, though, in concluding that the benefit in this instance was worth the risk.

Filed Under: baseball, print at home tickets, secondary market, tickets, yankees
Companies: yankees

Finally, A MLB Team Gets A Deal For In-Market Online Streaming

from the water-stone-etc. dept

Major League Baseball has long contended that fans should watch games in the manner in which it chooses, rather than how the fans themselves want to. This is the thinking behind its local blackout policies, first intended to "protect" ticket sales by not allowing the TV broadcast of games that weren't sold out, and lately, intended to "protect" local TV broadcasts by making it impossible for fans to watch their local team online. It takes the blackouts so seriously that it's even patented a way to black out local users from online streams, an absurd show of pride in something that basically just frustrates fans and customers. But there may be some cracks appearing in the local online blackouts, as the New York Yankees, Cablevision and MLB have reached a deal for in-market streaming of games. At first glance, the negotiations sound pretty convoluted, especially considering the Yankees own a stake in YES, the local TV rightsholder. But not surprisingly, the result -- that people in the Yankees' local market can only buy the online subscription if they're Cablevision subscribers that get the YES network in their cable package -- seems like it's par for the course for MLB, which has a penchant for trying to lock down everything baseball-related online.

The amount of baseball that's broadcast on TV has boomed over the past couple of decades, having escaped the thinking that making the game harder for fans to follow on TV was somehow actually good for it. Now, the same thing is playing out online, where MLB seems hellbent on frustrating fans who want to see all of their teams' games online. What makes online different than TV, in that putting up these walls in front of the game's most dedicated fans is somehow a good thing?

Filed Under: baseball, markets, streaming
Companies: cablevision, mlb.com, yankees