The other shoe drops on Yankees' & Mets' new stadiums.

The bubble is bursting. Try to contain your Schadenfreude.

The NY Times Bats Blog reports that season-ticket subscriptions for the Yankees and Mets are likely to take a significant drop next season, as the "new stadium" allure wears off, and season ticket holders adjust to the fact that the secondary market isn't what it used to be.

Turns out a lot of entrepreneurs in the past bought season tickets and made a tidy profit on resale. That's not really news (it happens everywhere), but it creates an unreliable impression of the true durability of a team's fanbase. These people were setting up small businesses for themselves.  It worked well for years, but this year it's not, because the Yankees & Mets jacked up all of their prices in their new stadiums. Oh, and there was this thing called a recession.

"In the past, the tickets were easier to resell," said Donne, who last year paid $120 each for seats and had no trouble reselling them for twice as much. "The Yankees totally overpriced them. When you go on StubHub, there are seats all throughout the stadium."

Michael Bahn is in the same position as Donne, only his ticket prices at Yankee Stadium increased to $75 each, from $45 last year.

"Last year, it was the last year of the stadium, a good economy, I did pretty well," Bahn said. "So I figured, I did pretty well last year, it’s the first season of the stadium, the economy wasn’t terrible and the team looks better, let’s see what happens."

Now Bahn said he would be lucky to break even, largely because of the profit he made selling his opening day tickets.

So now these folks who turned a profit in the past are suddenly having a hard time even getting face value for their tickets. They're basically losing their shirts. And they're not going to buy next year. (See some of their comments here). 

The problem for the teams is, they financed the new ballparks themselves, largely using bonds that demand they keep season ticket subscriptions at a certain level:

To be sure, the bonds issued to pay for Citi Field are backed partly by revenue from luxurysuites and premium seats. Because the companies and individuals who buy them sign multiyear contracts, the Mets are in no imminent danger of failing to meet their obligations to bondholders.

But if the team goes into a swoon that lasts several years, the situation could change, said Kurt Krummenacker, a vice president at Moody's Investors Service, which rates the bonds issued to pay for the stadium at Baa3, the lowest investment grade.

"We only have one year of revenue to work off of, and that’s benefited from the bump of the new stadium and the new-car feel," he said. "But what happens next year is an open question."

The problem is a little better at Yankee stadium, but not much:

Revenue from premium seats accounts for about 40 percent of the money pledged to paying debt service, the report said.

“The share of projected revenues that is dependent on luxury suites could be a credit weakness in the current economic environment,” the report said. “However, Moody’s understands that only seven of the suites that were available are unsold as of June 2009.”

The stadium has a total of 47 luxury suites.

So, 15% of their suites are completely empty this year. If that number grows significantly next year (which seems very possible), more and more of the opayroll will have to be diverted.

How bad is it? This year's subway series didn't even sell out. And Yankee stadium has actually only had one announced sellout all year (opening day).

So the teams are caught between a rock and a hard place:

• Lower ticket prices and you create more demand for tickets, but give up revenue you were counting on; or
• Keep ticket prices where they are, and you can weather the storm for a little while, but eventually it will catch up to you. Fewer and fewer fans will come to each game, and suddenly you're not as relevant to the town as you once were.

Already, there are gripes about how ugly some aspects of the new Yankee Stadium are, and Kevin Millar, who loved playing in the old place, says the new one is kind of a dud: it's too quiet, the corporate fans are too polite. Read the comments of any of the stories I've linked and you'll see that average New Yorkers, many of them die-hard fans, are outraged at the turn events have taken. 

But really, should this surprise anyone other than the Steinbrenners? Both teams (but the Yankees in particular) have escalated payroll to newer and newer heights, all with the purpose of "winning now". It's a fine strategy as long as the people keep coming to see you play. But you can't "win now" forever, no matter how many CC Sabathias and Mark Teixierias you buy. Once there's a chink in that armor, once you've had two straight seasons out of the playoffs, do you really think the average working-class New York fan will continue to shell out $100+ for tickets? Do you really think companies will continue to buy suites to entertain clients? And do you really think that some "mystical aura" will get premiere free agents to sign with you to play in a half-full stadium for less money? Because it will be less money when you have to dedicate half your payroll to your current aging players and satisfying the bondholders who financed your $1.5 billion stadium .

As one of the more senior members of CC, I can tell you that the Yankees in the mid-80s were a laughingstock, and their stadium was perpetually empty. In a town where the heights can be dazzling, the falls to earth are a bit harder than in other places. And in the same way that the poorly-built MacMansion you bought in Florida in 2006 is now hardly worth the foundation it's on, the Yankees and Mets risk becoming the great sports stories of the next five years....for all the wrong reasons. 

Try not to cry too hard.