Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
October 20, 2008
Cowboy Up

The New York Yankees and Dallas Cowboys combined to form a company to control concessions at their ballparks:

"The old model of stadium concessions is broken," stated Hal Steinbrenner, Co-Chairman of the New York Yankees. "Fans want and deserve a better experience for their sports entertainment dollar. Working with Legends to leverage the talent and experience resident in the Yankees' and Cowboys' organizations will enable us to set a higher bar for sports franchises while delivering greater value to fans. When the new Yankee Stadium opens for the 2009 season, our fans will be able to experience first-hand the enhancements to our menus, concessions, retail operations and fan spaces that Legends has overseen."

The teams should also make more money:

The Yankees and Cowboys borrowed $100 million from Goldman Sachs and will form their own company to handle food, team stores, etc. at their new stadiums. Much of this will be to enhance the atmosphere in the suites. The company hopes to branch out to other teams, arenas and colleges.

By cutting out the middleman, the teams theoretically should make more money. This seems like a smart move by the Steinbrenners. Hal Steinbrenner spoke about a year ago about such ventures and Hank Steinbrenner, you may recall, once predicted the Yankees could work with the Red Sox. This is the kind of thing they were talking about.

Just another revenue stream to bring in or keep high quality ballplayers.


Posted by David Pinto at 02:02 PM | Management | TrackBack (0)
Comments

It is mind-boggling how much money the Yankees are going to take in starting next season...

Posted by: Ben at October 20, 2008 04:25 PM

I'm amused that they borrowed money from Goldman Sachs; it's not like they don't have tons of other revenue streams to use here. I wonder how much of that is "This is a good idea to help the economic crisis" pressure?

Posted by: Subrata Sircar at October 20, 2008 04:50 PM

I wonder if this is a good move. It doesn't matter if it's the Yankees and the Cowboys or a AAA franchise, sports teams clearly don't have the purchasing power that the ARAMARKs, Centerplates, and Sportservices, etc. of the world when it comes to buying raw or finished product for resale. I would think this will make their in-stadium product even more expensive, due to the fact that they have certain margins to meet. $15 beers, here we come... :(

Posted by: glenn at October 20, 2008 05:16 PM
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