$2.40 For An All-Star Game Box Seat?
$2.40 for a box seat is not the crazy price we are talking about. Those days are long gone.
The scene above is Fenway Park where the 1946 All-Star Game was played. As fans lined up for tickets the night before the game at the box office (what a novel idea), they had the choice of purchasing box seats for $2.40 or reserved seats for $1.80.
Please direct your attention to the kids, wearing suits no less, neatly lined up waiting for tickets. Yes, even kids could save up $1.80 by delivering newspapers, mowing lawns or doing chores in 1946.
The crazy prices we are talking about are for the current baseball All-Star game.
According to a May 9 Forbes Magazine story, the 2014 baseball All Star Game in Minneapolis is the second most expensive ticket in All-Star game history. The article points out that according to a ticket broker who owns hundreds of MLB All-Star tickets the average ticket price for the 2014 All-Star Game is significantly higher than the previous four All-Star games, with a current average ticket price of $1,096.
The St. Paul Pioneer Press reported that prices ranged from $300 for a standing-room-only ticket to thousands of dollars for the best seats in the ballpark.
“We’re going to have tickets. It’s whether it fits into your budget,” said a director for another ticket broker. At the end of June that company had already sold about 300 tickets and had about 75 to 100 left.
The fact that ticket brokers / re-sellers (a.k.a. scalpers) can get their hands on so many tickets to begin with, shows that there is something fundamentally wrong with all sports ticketing and especially baseball.
Phooey on ticket brokers and all the other parasites who provide a service that baseball fans never asked for or wanted. Double phooey on MLB for complicity in ALLOWING this to happen.
Here’s a crazy idea, it might seem an impractical logistical nightmare, but MLB could limit the secondary market prices by selling tickets at the box office starting a couple of days before the game. Season ticket holders if they decided to buy All-Star tickets would also get their tickets before the game via email or at the box office within the same time frame. These time crunch measures would make it much more difficult for scalpers to reign in thousands of tickets for mark-up.
On July 14, 2014 the day before the game, this secondary market has seen rates drop steadily to a more reasonable average of $556 per ticket.
Perhaps the brokers are really only the secondary problem, MLB are the real rip-off artists here. Don’t tell me these prices are a reflection of modern society, technology or laissez faire capitalism. This is sheer greed.
If you want to attend the All-Star game, MLB has you buy a package which includes a lot of stuff that nobody cares about. (Hey that’s a good name for a web site!)
Besides the All-Star game you pay for: FanFest, the Futures Game, the Legends and Celebrity Softball Game, the Home Run Derby and a commemorative program. Twins season ticket holders got first crack at these tickets. A public lottery for a chance to buy tickets is next. How re-sellers get there hands on so many tickets is the x-factor here.
So what was the face value of a 2014 All-Star game seat with all the festivities at Target Field? One ticket strip cost from $401 to $1,416 for Twins Champions Club members. Face value for the ticket to the game itself ranged from $125 to $400.
Shame on MLB.
$2.40 in 1946 would be worth about $35 today — still a lot for a kid but quite reasonable otherwise.
Besides the All-Star game you pay for: FanFest, the Futures Game, the Legends and Celebrity Softball Game, the Home Run Derby and a commemorative program. Twins season ticket holders got first crack at these tickets. A public lottery for a chance to buy tickets is next. How re-sellers get there hands on so many tickets is the x-factor here.