It's a home run for StubHub.
The Yankees are transferring their ticket resale business from Ticketmaster to StubHub, ESPN reported Sunday. The team is expected to officially announce the agreement at a press conference Monday at 11:30 a.m.
The six-and-half year, $100 million deal to make StubHub the Bronx Bombers' official ticket resellers settles a long standoff between the team and StubHub, which began in 2012. That year, the Yankees were one of two teams to opt out of Major League Baseball's renewal of its arrangement with StubHub, the league's official secondary ticket marketplace.
The bad blood between the Yankees and StubHub soured even more in February, when the team announced it would stop accepting print-at-home PDF tickets in favor of the mobile tickets StubHub couldn't supply.
Publicly, the Yankees said they had changed their policy on PDF tickets "to further combat fraud and counterfeiting of tickets associated with print-at-home paper tickets." PDFs can be printed many times, but only first person to get their PDF scanned at the door gets in, whether or not he actually purchased the original ticket.
Deadspin's Tom Ley saw the matter differently: "The reality is that it has everything to do with the team’s partnership with Ticketmaster and ongoing war against StubHub," he wrote at the time. Ticket resellers using StubHub can sell their merchandise at as low a price as they choose; those using Ticketmaster must price their tickets above face value.
"The Yankees’ wish to avoid the realities of supply and demand is the reason the team touts Ticketmaster as its official resale partner," he wrote.
While they couldn't outright ban the use of StubHub, the Yankees did make it difficult to do so: sellers and buyers had to make their transactions at a StubHub office situated more than a half-mile away from Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.
StubHub is also the official fan-to-fan ticket marketplace for Yankee rivals the New York Mets.
A press conference taking place at Yankee Stadium at 11:30 a.m. Monday will likely provide further details about the new partnership.
