I've been hearing all summer about the prime seating at the new Yankee Stadium, where entire sections behind home plate are virtually empty. At $2500 per seat per game (!!), perhaps the Yankees misjudged the market a bit.

Part of the textbook definition of a "market" is the ability to pay. Even in the Big Apple, where there is surely a lot of ability to buy a few hundred seats at these astronomical prices, there is clearly not the willingness.

Now we understand that post-season tickets for those same seats will be selling for a more reasonable (and relatively paltry) $250-400 per game. They're not exactly giving away the store, but it would have been hard to get home field advantage with several hundred prime seats sitting vacant.

All of this calls to mind a tip I heard several years ago from an automotive executive: "Charging what the market will bear is fundamentally a good idea. Just don't make it obvious."

Labels: customer centered, marketing, pricing