There are tons of people who are going to now change their mind and instead of buyign their grandmother the picasso original for xmas buy her the Yankees tiffany lamp.

Consuming the Yankees is a reduction in disposable income for some people. Yankees tickets are still cheaper than the Opera, or dinner at Union Square Cafe, etc.

Furthermore, the Yankees socialized their risks for a reason.

Sure it is. It’s paid for through cable tv fees. I’d bet plenty of people who are worried about losing their homes will cut the cord on cable TV.

The yankees are lucky however that their revenues are not as dependent on sources of revenue that are liable to fluctuate.

That said – there are still at least 6-7 unsold luxury boxes. If you would have told the yankees a year and a half ago that 6-7 boxes would remain unsold they would have thought you were crazy.

Each box costs $600 – 700K. So that’s around $4-5M of lost revenue right now.

Or the difference between Pettite’s $16M demand and the yankees reported $12M offer.

I’m sure there is tremendous concern.

The yankees borrowed money to finance the stadium and did so based on estimates for projected revenues.

If those revenues suddenly plummet – then they could in theory have trouble servicing the debt they took on.

Now, thanks to the tax payers, much of the debt they took on was very favorable to them.

But it’s an issue. The entire economy is not only contracting – it’s deflating. In deflation the prices for goods and services decrease due to lowered demand.

Many people posting here are assuming that demand for baseball related good and services will remain constant and won’t be affected by the larger downturn.

That’s very unlikely.

The teams you’ll really see this potentially affect are the ones that have borrowed a lot of money and don’t have fixed sources of revenue.

Teams that are most dependent on ticket sales for revenue must be very worried.

Consumer spending surely is a factor. It would be interesting to see how many long time season ticket holders that got screwed out of their seats to make way for luxury boxes retained their licences. I’m sure there are unsold luxury suites. Part of the Yankee’s problems stem from their greed. I wonder if there is any regret about building the new ballpark.

Not at all. First of all the holiday shopping season started on friday. Second of all sales weren’t at the levels people hoped for. Third there’s huge concerns about falling profit margins due to retailers cutting prices to get people into the stores.

That’s why the market fell 700 points today. That didn’t just happen for no reason.

And on top of that – it’s just a fact that consumer spending has decreased for 4 months in a row which is a very rare occurrence in the US economy since WWII. The last time it happened was 27 years ago. And the economy is much worse off now than in was during the recession of 1991 – much worse off.

People spend on baseball out of their disposable income. Disposable income is the first thing people stop spending on.

At the same time, they have to plan for either deflation or hyper-inflation, so it’s best they wait until the last minute when they know which they are dealing with. AND, any excuse to lower payroll or to “collude” is a good one.

Nope…because from what team would they “steal” the picks from?

If a team offers arb to a player and the player declines arb but then later signs with this same team for a multi-year contract, then does the team still get the draft picks?

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Sure, the Yankees will get the Yankees draft picks, but will get penalized and won’t get the supplimental picks.