John Oliver: Yankees Are "The Biggest Elitist Assholes In All Of Sports"
John Oliver, host of HBO's "Last Week Tonight", called the Yankees "the biggest elitist assholes in all of sports" after MFY COO Lonn Trost said the team would no longer accept printed tickets from StubHub, in part because he doesn't want low-class riff-raff sitting in "premium locations" alongside wealthy bigshots.
"The problem below market at a certain point is that if you buy a ticket in a very premium location and pay a substantial amount of money. It's not that we don't want that fan to sell it, but that fan is sitting there having paid a substantial amount of money for a ticket and (another) fan picks it up for a buck-and-a-half and sits there, and it's frustrating to the purchaser of the full amount. And quite frankly, the fan may be someone who has never sat in a premium location. So that's a frustration to our existing fan base."
Oliver announced that his show had bought two Legends seats behind home plate for the first three games of the season and that it plans to sell those tickets for 25 cents each.
I've had the same two seats for almost 20 years at Fenway and I have never wondered whether the people on either side of me paid full price or not for their seats.
So how do I tell whether or not the person next to me in the premium location paid full price? Do I take note of the lack of a tie, the missing Gucci handbag, or maybe the skin color? Please enlighten me, Mr. Trost...
ESPN: HBO's John Oliver designed a contest looking for "riffraff" to sit among the "rich" New York Yankees fans who occupy the expensive Legends seats. What the comedian got on Opening Day Tuesday were Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - or, at least, two fans dressed up like the fictional characters. The two turtles sat directly behind home plate in clear view of the national broadcast on ESPN and the local one on YES. The turtles -- identified as John Welch and Joe Spilo of Yorktown, according to Newsday -- won a contest from Oliver's Sunday Show "Last Week Tonight" in which fans were asked to use the Twitter hashtag #IHaveNeverSatInAPremiumLocation. In the contest, fans went to Twitter with pictures of their "riffraff" attire they would wear in the premium seats.
NYDN: After two fans dressed as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sat right behind home plate in the Bronx on Opening Day, visible from the center-field camera on every pitch, four fans — two dressed like Katy Perry’s sharks from her Super Bowl performance and two in turquoise unicorn costumes — sat in the second row Wednesday night, though they were just off camera toward the third-base side.
Surprised?
ReplyDeleteNot at all.
ReplyDeleteBlast From The Past: "Did Police Eject A Man From Yankee Stadium For Trying To Use The Bathroom During "God Bless America"?"
ReplyDeleteI've had the same two seats for almost 20 years at Fenway and I have never wondered whether the people on either side of me paid full price or not for their seats.
ReplyDeleteSo how do I tell whether or not the person next to me in the premium location paid full price? Do I take note of the lack of a tie, the missing Gucci handbag, or maybe the skin color? Please enlighten me, Mr. Trost...
"Elitist asshole" is almost too nice of a term.
ESPN:
ReplyDeleteHBO's John Oliver designed a contest looking for "riffraff" to sit among the "rich" New York Yankees fans who occupy the expensive Legends seats. What the comedian got on Opening Day Tuesday were Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - or, at least, two fans dressed up like the fictional characters.
The two turtles sat directly behind home plate in clear view of the national broadcast on ESPN and the local one on YES. The turtles -- identified as John Welch and Joe Spilo of Yorktown, according to Newsday -- won a contest from Oliver's Sunday Show "Last Week Tonight" in which fans were asked to use the Twitter hashtag #IHaveNeverSatInAPremiumLocation. In the contest, fans went to Twitter with pictures of their "riffraff" attire they would wear in the premium seats.
NYDN:
ReplyDeleteAfter two fans dressed as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sat right behind home plate in the Bronx on Opening Day, visible from the center-field camera on every pitch, four fans — two dressed like Katy Perry’s sharks from her Super Bowl performance and two in turquoise unicorn costumes — sat in the second row Wednesday night, though they were just off camera toward the third-base side.