NY Times article- Jet tickets

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/sports/football/31tickets.html?_r=1&ref=sports

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Saturday night’s preseason game between the Giants and the Jets drew a crowd announced as 74,255 to Giants Stadium, which seats 80,242.

The Jets and the Giants will begin playing in a new stadium at the Meadowlands next year, but all the seats may not be full.

The game, a 27-25 Jets victory, was the last between the teams in their current stadium in the Meadowlands. Next year, they will move next door to a new stadium costing $1.6 billion. It will seat about 82,500.

But in selling seats for both stadiums during a severe recession, Jets and Giants officials are facing economic forces that have been daunting even big-ticket sports franchises in major markets.

The Giants, who still have seats to sell for some games this season, have not found buyers for about 3,000 club season tickets for 2010, some in the best locations at the highest prices.

And the Jets lag behind the Giants. They said they still had “a few thousand” season tickets remaining for 2009 and were advertising half-season packages.

As for 2010 in the new stadium, the Jets are not providing specific sales figures for suites, club seats with personal seat licenses or nonclub seats because, they said, it was too early to know.

“Right now, we are sort of in the middle of the process,” said Thad Sheely, the Jets’ executive vice president for stadium development. “We still have some selling to do.”

Jim Lites, a senior consultant contracted by the Giants to sell seats in the new stadium, acknowledged that the recession and the higher ticket costs for 2010 were having a chilling effect.

“There is a point at some price that people won’t purchase a product,” Lites said. “It’s still a bit of sticker shock. There has been some pushback on the price.”

The gentrification of stadium seating in sports reached a new threshold this year with the opening of the new Yankee Stadium. Some seats in rows closest to the plate were initially priced at $2,500 a game.

Some went unsold. And although unsold grandstand seats at N.F.L. games could lead to local television blackouts, the league said that empty club seats or suites would not remove games from local broadcasts.

Lites said the Coaches Club behind the Giants’ bench has 2,093 seats that require a $20,000 personal seat license and $700 per ticket for 10 games, including two exhibitions.

About 400 are still available, Lites said, as well as about 2,600 other club seats in less-expensive locations. The rest of the main stadium is sold, he said, and demand for those lower-priced seats exceeded the supply.

But the luxury suites are still available. The Giants said they had leased slightly more than 60 percent of the approximately 200 suites, totaling about 4,000 seats.

That sales figure has moved only marginally from the Giants’ report from almost a year ago of more than 50 percent.

Mike Stevens, the chief marketing officer for the Giants, said the most expensive suites, costing $500,000 a season, were taken, as were the lowest-priced suites, which cost about $150,000. But the suites in between have not generated as much demand.

“At the depths of the recession, it was not an opportune time to talk to people about a product like suites,” Stevens said. “But in the last couple of weeks to a few months, receptivity levels have changed. We have a lot of agreements in the pipeline.”

Suites for Giants games will have from 12 to 26 seats, he said. The Jets’ suites, Sheely said, will have 12 to 30 seats, totaling about 5,000.

The best suites, Sheely said, feature “outdoor terraces and a private, all-inclusive club modeled after New York clubs like the University Club or the Racquet Club, with fireplaces and dark wood paneling.”

But when asked how many suites had been sold, Sheely said, “We are not publicly discussing numbers.”

As for this season’s unsold tickets, Matt Higgins, the Jets’ executive vice president for business operations, said: “That’s another number we’re not disclosing. We have a few thousand left and we’ll be sold out by opening day.”

Although the top personal seat license for the Giants is $20,000, the Jets sold some through an auction for as much as $85,000, Sheely said. The Jets’ Web site lists the most expensive remaining P.S.L.’s at $30,000.

After Giants fans expressed reluctance to buy some corner mezzanine seats for $400 a game, the Giants reduced the price of 1,596 of them to $250, although the license fees for those seats remained $7,500.

The P.S.L.’s, a new concept in the New York market, help pay the construction cost of the new stadium. Lites said they could be sold on the secondary market and transferred to new owners.

P.S.L.’s allow fans the right to buy tickets perpetually. Lites said some customers with $10,000 P.S.L.’s for the Giants were already trying to sell their rights online for $20,000.

“I don’t know if they’re successful,” Lites said. “We won’t recognize the transfer — unless it’s to an immediate family member — prior to 2011.”

The sticker shock, as Lites called it, was felt throughout the waiting list for season tickets. Some fans waited for decades but refused to buy seats for 2010 when given the chance.

One was Gina Alfonso of Nanuet, N.Y., who waited 24 years. “I got an e-mail saying there were tickets available and to grab them,” she said. “It said, ‘Dear Giants Wait List Member.’ ”

But when she read the terms, she said, she was “surprised and disappointed” at the prices.

“I didn’t call them,” she said. “It’s hard for a normal fan to go.”

Albert Cruz of Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., had a similar reaction when he was asked to renew his Jets season tickets for next year. He has sat in the fourth row for 25 years, he said. His tickets cost $90.

For next year, he said, he was offered midlevel seats with P.S.L.’s from $8,000 to $9,000 and per-game prices of $400 to $500.

“They’re just too darn expensive,” Cruz said. “As a loyal fan, I feel shafted.”

The Jets said many customers were financing their licenses through the Jets at 6.5 percent interest over five years, or 8 percent over 15 years.

The Giants said they had allowed some extended payment plans, but that few customers had requested them.

“We decided very early on we did not want to play the role of being a financier,” Stevens said.

The Jets’ top price for a P.S.L., outside of an auction, is $30,000 and the lowest is $4,000, according to their Web site. The Giants’ lowest P.S.L.’s sell for $1,000.

The Jets will sell 27,000 seats in the upper bowl with no P.S.L.’s. But that will not matter to Ed Ranieri of Staten Island, who has had Jets season tickets since 1986. He is giving them up.

“It got too expensive,” he said, adding: “They came out with a new stadium we don’t need. It’s all about the money. They ruined a nice thing. I still love the Jets, but I’ll watch on TV.”