Business

Yankees expected to end partnership with StubHub next season

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The New York Yankees will likely be ending its relationship with ticket exchange StubHub next season, The Post has learned.

The team will employ a new ticketing system, perhaps on its own, in which it may restrict how many tickets fans can sell and how close to game time they can sell them. The Yanks may also charge fans less than the 10 percent commission StubHub charges, sources said.

The team, led by general partner Hal Steinbrenner, blames eBay’s StubHub for declining attendance, which is off about 4 percent compared with this point last season. Fans, instead of buying unsold tickets from the team, purchase resold tickets for much less than face value on StubHub. But such an active resale market means many tickets go unused.

A full 66 percent of Yankees tickets in April and May resold on ticket exchanges for a price under the ticket’s face value, according to SeatGeek Research, which finds customers the best prices for tickets.

On average, Yankees tickets are discounted $10.96 — 17 percent off their average face value of $65.10, according to SeatGeek.

Average prices for premium seats dropped the most — $90.38 off $250 Field MVP tickets, and $76.01 off $130 Field Level seats.

Much of that discount comes from StubHub listings.

“If teams resell tickets themselves, StubHub is done,” a source close to the team said.

The team believes the problem is that speculators short Yankees tickets on StubHub. They agree to sell a ticket for, say, $100 for a game in August, and then, since they do not have to buy the ticket until a week before the game, purchase the same ticket for less on StubHub and keep the difference.

The rush of tickets being sold closer to game time creates too much liquidity, the Yankees contend.

On a service like Ticketmaster, which the NFL uses, one has to own the ticket before reselling it.

Ticket reseller Joe DeLaura says he used to short tickets, but now that StubHub requires the purchase a week in advance (instead of a day), it is harder to do, since the big price drop happens a few days before games.

He believes the Yankees’ putting a cap on pricing will not result in more fans buying tickets from the team.

“The Yankees need to adjust their ticket prices according to the demand to see their games,” DeLaura contends. “Since the demand is less than what it was a few years ago, they need to adjust down accordingly.”

He says resellers will be breaking even or losing a little money on Yankees tickets this year. “It’s not worth the effort,” he said.

So he believes brokers who now buy perhaps one-quarter of the Yankees full-season tickets will purchase fewer, hurting attendance — and getting rid of StubHub will not change that equation.

Bombers fan Jesse Schneider, who is on the 20-game Yankees season plan, said, “StubHub is an accurate reflection of what the market believes a ticket to a game is worth on a particular day.

“If I can get four $9 tickets between the bases in the upper deck for a weekday game in June, why should the Yankees care? The alternative is that I don’t show up, and they lose an entire generation of baseball fans.”

The Yankees declined comment.