When buying World Series tickets back in the day, fill out a form and mail it in. This is from the Blue Jays in 1992
\(54 and \)30 for tickets š Love the certified check or money order only for payment, times have changed lol
That’s the price for a beer and hotdog now
Hell it’s probably less than the Ticketmaster fees and taxes on the tickets now…
It 100% is, it might even be a quarter of it for a lot of tickets
MLB charged $770 last week for standing room only during the Mariners WS presale. I hate this timeline weāre in.
Keeps getting worse. \(54 is \)125 after inflation.
In 2016 WS tickets for lower was \(400 which is now about \)510.
Now itās what? 2000 face value? (I know 500s are about 500, and 200s are 850)
How are tickets for sports, concerts etc so far out of whack compared to inflation? It blows my mind.Ā
When companies realized they can absolutely fuck people because weāre willing to spend money on entertainment since it brings joy to our lives.
Enough people tweeted āI would pay ANYTHING to see ______ā that Ticketmaster finally called their bluff. Turns out, these people will pay anything to see the bands and teams they love. And weāre now in a time of blatant price-gouging because companies know Americans arenāt gonna sacrifice their comforts and conveniences, regardless of their ability to afford it
People scalp pokemon cards and hot wheels, everyone is out to make a quick buck.
Because people pay for them. If people stopped going to these things then ticket prices would stop rising.
At least teams like the Dodgers and Jays take the ridiculous profits and reinvest them back into the teams.
It’s the owners banking the profits and putting out a shit product that makes it worse
Because it’s just legalized scalping. And the people scalping are the ones that said it’s okay.
During the 2005 season I had a dedicated scalper. Sometimes I bought tickets at face value, sometimes much more other times dude would just give me a cheap seat for free. I referred everyone to him.
When it came to the WS I had first dibs at a ticket, $300+ I turned them down, just to much.
Hate that I long for the day when a scalper was a person to have on speed dial.
I went to about 45 Marlins games this year and I sat one or two rows behind the dugout for about 30 of them because I was put in touch with a friend of a friend who is a full-time reseller and he hooks me up.Ā Even for low-attendance teams like us, those seats still run from about $90-300 depending on the game. There’s usually entire rows empty around me.
The team tried to sell me a season package in April and when I told them they couldn’t compete with the reseller pricing I was getting but I’d be interested in talking if they could hook me up with a parking discount, my sales rep was like “I’ll come sit down next to you tonight and let you know what I can do” and then he ghosted me.
It’s a weird effect of supply and demand. The population is larger now and the demand is larger for live events, which basically causes a bidding war for what is very limited supply. Live events cannot scale well with increasing population/demand since you cannot easily increase supply, so prices increase rapidly. Notice that the market prices for low demand baseball tickets remains inexpensive. It’s the high demand tickets to premier matchups and playoff games where prices soar.
Concert price increases are further compounded because artists are far better off going with a venue that is too small rather than too large or doing fewer nights, since overshooting can be disastrous(Black Keys last year). I remember Gracie Abrams played Madison Square Garden for just one night and tickets predictably shot past $1000. Her team underestimated demand, but it’s far better than overestimating demand.
Add in that the US is seeing soaring immense wealth inequality since the 2008 and 2020 economic shocks. Think about it, if you’re firmly upper class in America now, spending a few thousand dollars on World Series tickets is literally imperceptible to your finances. Some events disallow resale, but that causes a whole set of problems and doesn’t solve the underlying problem that demand far outstrips supply now, especially since lockdown ended.
Sadly, I think a few years from now, we’ll be longing for 2025 ticket prices.
I think a lot of the demand is because scalping has been legalized. If its a desirable event then major portions of the total tickets are sold to resellers aka scalpers. It use to be that it was really hard to get tickets for popular events but if you did you were paying face value; Now you can usually get tickets for almost any event it you are willing to pay enough money. And then if almost everyone is paying at least \(200 for an event then the entertainer has no reason to offer tickets at \)75 and hand over all that profit to the secondary market.
Buying scalped tickets is also far more easier these days. It used to be, for the most part, that if you wanted to get scalped tickets, you would have to go the ballpark and roll the dice that there was something available and in your price range. Now you can just easily check on-line.
Moreover, in the past if you wanted to sell, for the most part, you would need to have it done at the ballpark. Now this just a few clicks on-line. Iām
And the scalpers have now been cleaned up to be “ticket resellers”. Including big scalping corporations.
Well in Toronto the Skydome now has like 10k fewer seats while the population in Canada has exploded since the 90s. Demand is up.
But demand was always a lot greater than demand. There have never been empty seats at the WS.
I think itās basically legalized scalping via resellers. Back then you didnāt have the ability to sell and resell. Now thereās better price discrimination
Look at player salariesā¦
During the pandemic, the companies realized they can gouge us as much as they wantĀ
no competition + no regulation = price gouging
If the 2016 World Series occurred today nosebleed tickets would probably be like 3k
When the Yankees made the WS last year, the cheapest tickets I saw for any of the 3 games in the Bronx was $1100.Ā
Immediately said nope to that idea.Ā
I got game 5 tickets for face value, $550ish each, after game 3. Wish I didnāt though.
Mariners when I kept peaking lowest I saw was 1400, and it went to 1600 at one point.
I was following ticket prices hours before first pitch during the alcs home games an they were dipping below 150$
this is the real sign baseball is having a resurgence
Jesus, was that resale or face value? I got standing room tickets for the World Series in Toronto and they’re nowhere near as much. \(350CAD/\)250USD
Face value off Ticketmaster in the presale for people who signed up for 2026 season tickets lol. Actual seats started at like $820.
I like that they were still using the Canadian spelling of ‘cheque’. Most places in Canada have now adopted the American version and I don’t see cheque much anymore.
\(54 and \)30 in 1992 are about \(125 and \)70 today. The \(6 handling charge is about \)14.
In CAD inflation would put the \(54 at \)105.76, or $75.76 in freedom bucks.
If the president of FIFA sees these prices he’d have a stroke.
Can’t even get in the door of SoFi for a match between World Cup nobodies (as much as such a thing exists at the WC) - not even one of the real in-demand teams for under 2k a seat.
And that’s after buying their shitty NFT and getting a chance to get a ticket
Now it cost $2700 CAD for those same tickets on Ticketmaster re-sale.
Lovely times we’re living in.
$15-29k CAD to sit in the first sections behind the plate on StubHub.
I could get one ticket and a beer if I sold my car.
My boss told me today that he has a buddy who bought 2 tickets and spent $12,000.
That’s just absurd. I’d rather watch from home, but that’s mainly because if i spent that much on baseball tickets I’d probably lose my home.
To be fairā¦ it comes with āswankyā food. But aināt no beer.
Admittedly they have some beer you can’t get elsewhere in the stadium. And if I’m wrong it’s not easily found elsewhere in the stadium.
What kinda beer is it
You would find these ads in the Toronto Star and Toronto Sun newspapers, fill them out and wait/hope for tickets. We got very lucky and got tickets for the ‘91 Allstar game, Game 6 of the 1992 ALCS, and Game 6 of the 1993 World Series this way! I saw Joe Carter’s game 6 home run for $32 of my mom’s money!
We had Blue Jays season tickets at the time but filled out a similar one for the 1994 World Cup. Saw USA Switzerland for $25 at the Pontiac Silver Dome, simpler times.
This one makes me especially sad after seeing the pricing structure for 2026.
Back in the early 90ās, we used to anxiously wait for the ticket catalog to arrive in the mail sometime in January or February. Weād then immediately choose the games we wanted and specify the price tiers, add up the total, add the handling fee, and mail in the cheque. In a few weeks, our ticket package would arrive and weād see which ones we got, and which ones we didnāt because they sold out. I forget what they did for the refund, if one was needed - they probably included a cheque.
Is there a version for the Mariners?
Nah, they didn’t want to deal with sending those checks backĀ
I have a 1997 Blue Jays regular season ticket for $4 vs. the Brewers that Bob Uecker signed for me. š
The most surprising part I noticed was in point #5:
No credit card sales.
It was a different time!
My favorite part is the $6 handling fee.
I remember this! Regretfully it was too expensive for my parents. $4 seats is all they could afford for regular season games in the 500 level where Park Social & Corona Rooftop Patio now reside. Need to dig up the “early bird order form” the Jays would send them in December for tickets. They would follow the same drill – choose the games they wanted, mail it back, and weeks later, a fat envelope would arrive with tickets. Some of the game choices could not be filled due to demand. Those were the days…
Lmao. āSeats in a non-drinking section requestedā
There actually was a non drinking section which was a nightmare at times as it was not very clear when buying them You would have a bunch of college kids with beer coming into the section and it became a headache for the a Jays.
I found the Yankees’ 1987 season ticket advertisement. You could get the whole season in box seats, all 81 games, for $750.Ā
Standard price for bleachers was still just \(3 (\)8 in today’s dollars)
I found the Yankees’ 1987 season ticket advertisement. You could get the whole season in box seats, all 81 games, for $750.
\(2,139 today, \)26 a game.
Calling 1992 “back in the day” hurt me a little
Here’s a thread on the 1992 Blue Jays regular season pricing:Ā https://www.reddit.com/r/Torontobluejays/comments/2kuiu3/blue_jays_ticket_prices_from_1992_starting_from_4/
Not only is it cheap, but I miss the simpler times when there only 3 or 4 prices, they didn’t change, and you’d get a paper ticket souvenir.
Must me cool going to a world series
$6 handling fee for processing mail in orders with cheques. What are we paying Ticketmaster these days for?
It looks like the only seats for sale are in the upper deck, with ābā seats in the outfield,
I imagine the lower level prices were probably much higher
I remember filling that form out
I spent $200k.on tickets. YOLO. Don’t let the man hold you down. Larhest income inequality ever. Nobody can do anything. Keep buying merch
Confusing-ass instructions, having to pay two separate totals of \(30 and \)24 if requesting $54 Skydeck seats.
And Iām STILL mad about it NGL
