The Yankees have finally dumped StubHub — or so the team thinks.
Earlier this week, Major League Baseball Advanced Media signed another contract with StubHub, which will remain the official site where fans can resell their tickets. The Yanks, along with the Los Angeles Angels and the Chicago Cubs, didn’t sign the deal.
Readers of this column knew what was going on back in September.
The Yankees were annoyed — and still are — that StubHub refused to put a minimum price on tickets resold on its site. Many seats for games at the Stadium were being listed for as little as a couple of bucks.
StubHub’s free-market prices, even with fees tacked on, were considerably less than fans would pay buying comparable seats direct from the team.
And the fact that fans could simply click on the StubHub button right there on the Yanks’ official site annoyed the team even more.
Upset at the free-market turn of events, the Steinbrenners dumped StubHub.
The Yanks will soon announce a reselling agreement with TicketMaster. This deal will presumably include the minimum-price provision the Yanks crave.
So all should be well in The Bronx, right?
Well, it would be if StubHub weren’t planning an end-around the MLB.com deal that the Yankees hate so much.
A source close to StubHub tells me the company plans to aggressively market its services to Yankees fans, including season-ticket holders who attend just a few games a season. Subscribers to the full 81-game home slate include many brokers who buy the tickets only so they are eligible for valuable post-season seats.
“Our expectation is that Yankees fans will continue to buy and sell on StubHub,” said this source, who added that StubHub will send out regular e-mail solicitations to fans of the Bronx Bombers.
StubHub, the source said, has a “very strong base of sellers [of Yankees tickets],” especially in New York City.
Even worse for the Yanks, StubHub plans to open at least one pick-up and drop-off location near the Stadium so fans who like to deal with it rather than TicketMaster can do so without difficulty.
The overriding problem, of course, is that the Internet has redefined all areas of retailing. And that includes ticket sales.
While the Yanks may want fans to use TicketMaster — so that the price of resold tickets is close enough to Yanks-sold tickets to encourage higher sales of the latter — the team can’t demand they do so.
Fans are still going to look for discounts on the Internet, and teams are going to be annoyed by it.
Therefore, the Steinbrenners’ aggravation level isn’t likely to go down much.
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The Federal Reserve announced yesterday that it will buy another $45 billion a month in government securities as part of Quantitative Easing Infinity Plus Even More.
I say: So what? More of a failed policy doesn’t equal success.
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Yesterday I spoke with ex-mayor and former federal prosecutor Rudy Giuliani about the seeming rash of insider-trading cases happening on Wall Street, including at Steve Cohen’s SAC Capital.
Giuliani is working for LifeLock, a company that protects people from ID theft, and he wanted to warn you that this is the time of year when you are most susceptible to such crimes.
I asked him about the greed that drives criminals on Wall Street.
“A lot of insider trading is not greed,” says Giuliani. “It’s pride more than greed. It’s [about] being king of the hill.”
He thinks successful Wall Streeters are tempted to cheat when times get rough — perhaps they are having a down year — and their reputations are at stake.
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I’m hearing that HSBC is changing the way it compensates commission-based employees.
And I am told people aren’t happy and are being enticed by other firms.
HSBC didn’t call us back to comment.
The bank paid a $1.9 billion fine earlier this week for money laundering. So it wouldn’t be surprising if HSBC passed the hat around to commissioned workers.
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Now, a comment about last Friday’s employment report: The only good word for it is “ridiculous.”
The Labor Department reported that a mediocre 146,000 new jobs were created in November.
The only problem is, the department also admitted that it over-counted by 33,000 jobs — or around 20 percent — the gains right before the election.
What a surprise! Somehow, in a presidential election year, Washington put out a figure that was favorable to the current administration. Who would have guessed?
Labor also said the unemployment rate fell to 7.7 percent in November from 7.9 percent, which caused cheering at places like The New York Times.
The jobless rate is also misleading. The only reason the unemployment number declined was that people either decided to retire or gave up looking for jobs because they were discouraged. Around 351,000 people, in fact, left the labor force in disgust.