Last month the New York Yankees announced a new ticketing policy saying, among other things, that print-at-home tickets would no longer be accepted. The fraud prevention measure hasn’t been received well by fans, not least because it seems to be a transparent swipe at StubHub.
The Yankees are, of course, major stakeholders in NYCFC. The nascent MLS franchise also plays at Yankee Stadium, leaving some fans of the team wondering if they would be stuck with the new policy as well.
At first the team said that it was just a Yankees thing and NYCFC would still accept print-at-home tickets.
But late last week the team took advantage of the Friday Night News Dump to say they were just kidding about the print-at-home thing. This was, of course, two days before their home opener against Toronto FC.
So how did the new policy work out yesterday?
Yeaaah.
In an attempt to control the story, NYCFC made a meal of its attendance figures, which led the pack in MLS for Week 2.
Of course attendance in MLS is measured by tickets sold, not butts in seats.
It’s unclear how long it will take NYCFC to fix this problem and what a solution would look like. The easiest thing would be to revert to allowing print-at-home tickets again, but somehow that doesn’t seem likely. The club will probably investigate and trial some ways to make the lines move faster; implementing those changes could happen by the next home game, or this could go on all season. It’s also not outside the realm of possibility that fans will be told to suck it up and deal. All this because NYCFC is compelled to deal with someone else’s problem.
MLS is back, baby!