 Today we are very happy to have Senior Vice President of Stadium Operations Doug Bihar joining us. Doug joined the organization in 1998. It is his 24th season with us. He oversaw the closing of the original stadium, was involved in the construction and design of the current stadium. He and his group are in charge of implementing the logistics behind all events at Yankee Stadium, from baseball to soccer to other large and small scale business, community and private events. He also oversees stadium security and the overall maintenance of the facility. And one kind of very important point to bring up, Doug has been in the building throughout the pandemic. He and his group have spent a tremendous amount of time and resources looking into the best practices and how we could get to this point today. So this has been a long, long buildup, getting where we are on Thursday. Could you speak a little bit to that before we take some questions? Sure, Michael. Thank you and good morning to everybody on the call and thank you as well. Yes, this journey to get to Thursday, our home opener started more than a year ago. We March of last year when we closed, we still came in. We had a dedicated group of some ops hoax that would work daily here in the building to try to understand what it was and what it is that we are dealing with. We worked with industry experts. We collaborated with anybody that we could. Our owners were intimately involved in the process to make sure that we were approaching this in the most strategic way possible. For us while we were able to open for our summer camp here last year and host a short season, we still wanted to evolve in our operations, in our health and safety program, continue to work with industry experts. We sought to achieve the health safety rating for the International Well Building Institute. We were the first stadium in the world to achieve this rating and it gave us a look and a checklist if you will of all of our health and safety procedures and protocols that we were putting in place to make sure that we were checking the right boxes. Being third party verified was important to us and the process is still continuing. We're still evolving, working very closely with the city and the state and the Department of Health on protocols and most recently, Michael, as you know, we're able to use Yankee Stadium as a vaccination site. We're hopeful that by the opener, we will have given close to 80,000 shots, which we think is remarkable and great work with the state and the city on that effort. Doug, thank you very much. Can you move the microphone a little bit closer? Great. Excellent. One other note about Doug obviously is on the stadium operations side. If you do have questions related specifically to ticketing, we can work with you offline on that. You can just send me or someone in our department an email. But with that, we can take a first question. Please use the raise hand function and we can take a first one from Bob Clappish. Thanks for taking the time. I'm curious how a decent number of fans will be in the ballpark. Will they be allowed to mingle in their concourses, buy food, use the restrooms, and buy the restrooms? But I'm just curious about the foot track in the ballpark, what's there inside? Yes, hi Bob. So this experience, first let me say we're very excited to have our fans back in the stadium and we appreciate their patience and understanding throughout this entire process and recognize that Thursday will be a completely new experience for them at Yankee Stadium. However, we also recognize that New Yorkers and folks all around the world are familiar with the physical distancing and the face covering requirements that exist today in most places that are open. So yes, concession stands will be open, but there is a distancing requirement and we'll have markers and signage all over to help people understand where and how to do that. But it should be a seamless, recognizable experience as they've had in the past. And just to follow up, will all parking garages be functioning as in the past? Most of the parking garages will be open as they have in the past, yes. Okay, thanks. Thanks Bob. We can take a next one from Sweeney Murdy. Good morning Doug, nice to see you. I was wondering if you could spell out some of the procedures for both entry and exit, because I guess they're both unique in their own way, with the entry to the stadium being kind of formal. But the exit to the stadiums is usually a little less structured. Are there certain procedures for both of those? Good morning Sweeney, good to see you. Hope you're well. So the experience, of course, will be a little bit different. We encourage all fans to get here early. As most everyone knows, there is a testing requirement in New York. So fans will have to show up with either a negative COVID test or proof of vaccination. We're working very closely with our security team here at the stadium to try to make that process as seamless as possible. There will be temperature checks as well. We have our queuing lines will look like they have in the past, except they'll be distancing between parties. Once inside the stadium, we've sold tickets in pods. So there'll be pod sizes of varying degrees. But most of them will be pods of twos and fours. And like I said, the look and feel of that flow will feel very, very similar than it has in the past, just with some restrictions. Egress, there's no formal protocol on how fans should leave. But like they have been in any other parts of what they're experiencing now, we just ask them to do it in a safe and as distant way as possible. Thanks, Sweeney. We can take the next one from Bruce Beck. Doug, I hope you're doing well, my friend. Is testing at site for fans a consideration at all, Doug? Hi, Bruce. Good to see you as well. You know, we have been speaking with multiple different groups and believe there are enough facilities within the five boroughs and close by that fans can have the opportunity to get tested fairly quickly. How do you define seating in pods? The guests are separated by empty seats, but do pods necessarily have to be family? Are they a group of friends that commit to being a group of friends? How does that break down? Yeah, so the seats are separated by at least six-footed distance and the seats that are not manifested are tied together so they can't be used. But yes, people that are comfortable to come within a allowed pod size, two, four, three, five, whatever they choose, we are okay with them being in that group together. And my last question, just following up on my five-footed shaft, if you're on the contours, will it be one-way, going sideway, you know, going forward and back? Is that the way it's going to be instead of kind of a mishmash when you're racing for a concession? So we looked at that as a possibility, but as you know, Bruce, the seating, restrooms, concessions be very difficult to control one way of traffic. We believe that with how we have everything set up, whether it's concessions and the seating, that our fans and guests will understand how to flow through that in a very safe and healthy way. Thank you. Good luck, Doug. Thank you. We'll take the next one from Barry Bloom. Thank you. Hi, Doug. How are you? Hi. The question for the future here, as this plays out, and more people get to come into the stadium, how much of what you're basically putting into place now, do you envision staying in place permanently? And then, OK, go ahead. So I think there are, well, certainly, we hope some of the distancing requirements get lessened, right? So we could enjoy a fuller capacity at our venue. But a lot of our health and safety protocols, I would say, are here for the future. How we clean and disinfect is of paramount importance, and that just doesn't speak to COVID. It speaks to any other virus or pathogen that may exist. So our training, we spent a whole lot of time this off season and working towards this season on doing things that fans and guests may not necessarily see. We did an enormous amount of training with our staff on how to use PPE, on the proper hand hygiene. And it may sound silly, but how to wash your hands is of vital importance to us. And our cleaning and disinfection program, we took and are taking biological samples of surfaces throughout our facility and have been doing that since March of last year to understand what, if anything, we're dealing with how our cleaning and disinfection program works. And we're doing that in conjunction with industry experts who work and train and clean hospitals to create the same type of safe environment for our fans and guests. And I'm assuming you're going cashless, right? We're trying to be as frictionless as possible. So yes, cashless is just that. And we'll have cash to card machines in the facility for those folks that come with cash that could, it's kind of like a reverse ATM. Yeah, I've been told by other stadium operators around the country that the cashless thing is kind of here to stay, that it's not something that's gonna change. And one of the things I also noticed during spring training at hockey games I've gone to is that there are no vendors in the stands anymore. Is that something that is a dinosaur and we're not gonna see anymore? It's hard to say, I think at least out of the gate, you're not gonna see that for a lot of reasons. I think when it comes to the health and safety piece of this as far as the distancing, I think avoiding unnecessary interactions with people that we don't know is always gonna be a good thing. Thank you. Thank you. Alyssa, you have the next question. Delay, so you're starting off at 20% capacity, just how many people is that? And what is the rule around mask wearing? Will there be people going around making sure people are wearing that? Yeah, so 20% for us is 10,850 tickets. Face coverings are required unless you are actively eating and drinking. We will have a team of folks who are responsible for ensuring compliance on not just face coverings, but occupancy in spaces. And of course, the foot traffic flow, which Bob and Bruce alluded to earlier is important to us to make sure we're managing that accordingly. The days that there are night games with the vaccination site is still going to be open. Is there any kind of delay when fans are allowed in? Is there any kind of transition period? Any complications or challenges with that? No, we're excited to still be able to continue to do this. And we've been working very closely with the state and city on how to manage through that process. And because we've been doing it for as long as we have seven days a week, and in some instances we did it around the clock, we have it pretty dialed in and don't anticipate any issues between vaccination in the morning and games at night. Thank you. Andrea, you have the next question. Good morning, thanks for taking my question. I appreciate it, Doug. Just a couple of things. The negative COVID test that fans need to have, how far in advance is it a day of test that they need to take? And then separately, I just wanted to confirm the steep separated by six feet. Is that the pods separated by six feet or in the pods, the seats are also separated by six feet? So thank you and good morning. The pods are separated by six feet. So if you're in a pod of four, you're sitting arm in arm with your group. As far as the testing, the requirement is a negative PCR test within 72 hours of the event or a negative antigen test within six hours of the event. Thank you. Thank you. Jack, you have the next question. Hey, Doug, good to see you. Both you and Michael talked about how getting to this point has been more than a year long process. And I'm sure you've thought about everything that could go right and could go wrong. I know you can't predict the future, but what's on your checklist of things that you are saying, we have to make sure we get this right? Good question, Jack, and good to see you as well. We have to get everything right. We've approached this as a kind of a pass-fail situation. We don't look at it as we're gonna get graded with a letter. Everything we've set forth is important. It is tremendously important for us. And it's not just the cleaning and disinfection part. It's the signage we put up. It's the relationships we built, the collaborations we have with industry experts and making sure that the, not just the fan experience, but the players, the media, all of the stakeholders who will be in our building have as seamless as a process as they can. We recognize we're doing this for the first time. This is new for all of us. It'll be new for you. It'll be new for me. So patience and understanding on everybody is certainly gonna be at the forefront, but we've, because we've been looking at this for the past 12, 13 months, we feel we're in a position to execute on those the right way. And then one quick follow-up. The governor's office gave a number for what it thought 20% was, but the Yankees have never given their number. Not gonna hold you to the exact number, but what do you envision the attendance will be on Thursday? How many people are you allowing in the building? The number we actually have approved at 20% is 10,850, and there's a lot of excitement around coming on Thursday. It is opening day, it is Yankee Stadium. There's always something very special about that. And we anticipate a good afternoon. The only thing we can't control is the weather and we're hoping it cooperates. Thanks a lot. Thank you. We'll take the next one from Ronald Blum from the AP. Hey, Doug, how are you? Good morning, how are you? Well, good. Of the tickets, are they all reserved for seasoned ticket holders? How did you decide since you have such small, limited number, what percentage, what, who gets to buy them? And of the 10,850, how many are set aside for players? Ron, I'll be honest with you, the ticketing part of it is a little bit out of my sweet spot and that's something maybe Michael and I could follow up with you after. Sure, Ron, we can take care of that offline. Feel free to reach out to me afterwards. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Next one goes to Kevin Reichert from Ballpark Digest. Good morning for taking the time for this. I have two questions. The first one is, have you considered a vaccination only section like other teams are looking at? We did not, we've spoke through that but we wanted to maximize the ability to get folks in and also the ruling from the state is that regardless of vaccination, we still have to have a distancing requirement. Gotcha. And secondly, do you have some sort of timeline in organizationally as to when the capacity can be re-evaluated? I know you guys operate in a lot more complex circumstances than other main teams, given the multiple layers of government but do you have a goal where you wanna say, hey, this is working, let's boost it to 35 or even 50%? So we're obviously working very closely with the city and state and they're guiding us on those efforts and for us it's getting out of the gate and starting, we're excited about the 20% and having the opportunity to show that we could do this in a safe way and we'll let this happen in a very organic way. Thank you. Thank you. Great, we'll take the next one from Christie Kaleshian. Christie, who are you representing today? Christie, I have to hit unmute. Great, thank you. Also, somebody has one shot and they're not fully vaccinated, is there an issue with that? Yeah, so the proof of vaccination being fully vaccinated will suffice in lieu of a negative test but the requirement is 14 days after your second shot of Pfizer or Moderna or 14 days after your first shot of Johnson & Johnson. Great. We will take the next one from Gilmour Avalos from NBC New York. Hi, Doug, sorry for the delay there. Will Yickey Stadium allow guests to use that Excelsior pass app and if so, how would that work? Yes, absolutely and good morning and good question. Absolutely, it's an important piece of our program, the Excelsior app through the state of New York is a great way for our fans to show up and have their proof of vaccination or proof of a negative COVID test on their phones. It'll make it very easy for security to validate that part of their entry, absolutely. And can fans use that as soon as Thursday? Absolutely, yes, it's ready to go and our staff is trained on how to look for it and use it. Thank you, Doug. Thank you. We'll take the next one from Bill Ladson from mlb.com. Yes, will you continue to still have the pomp and circumstance before games, is that allowed? So, that's not allowed, there are restrictions both from not only government restrictions, but league restrictions, but we feel opening day, Yankee Stadium, that in itself will create enough excitement. Thank you, Bill. One thing, Doug, we hadn't hit on just yet was the vaccination site and the fact that it will be continuing through April 30th. Could you speak to that and kind of what your experience was getting that site up and running? Sure, thank you, Michael. Yeah, you know, when we had the opportunity to host a vaccination site here at the stadium, our owners jumped at that opportunity. It was important for us to be and continue to be good community partners. It's always been a mandate from ownership and we started working very closely with the city and state on what would be the best way to function and what would be the best experience for the folks that were coming in to get vaccinated. It's been a very rewarding experience as seeing folks come in and out as excited as they've been to participate in this. It went incredibly well over the course of time and we've been doing it that when the question came, can we pull this off even in season or at least at the start of the season? Again, our owners made it clear if we can make it work, let's make it work. And working again very closely with the city and state on this, we think we could manage both not only non-game days but game nights being able to give shots and do it in the right way.