On March 7, 2020, a sunny, mid-70s, clear day in Scottsdale, I attended my very first Spring Training game with my mom, supporting my hometown team, the San Francisco Giants. We sat in the second row, right behind home plate. In the seats in front of us sat the family that owned the Giants. We got to chat with them, with coaches between innings, and with players as they came up to bat. We paid just over $100 for both tickets.
According to TicketSmarter, those seats can now go for over $10,000 each. Do they include a helicopter ride to the stadium? Are the seats recliners lined in ermine fur? Do you get a tomahawk steak dinner? Why on Earth are they so expensive now? And who is buying them.
While this may be an extreme example, the fact is that Spring Training Tickets have skyrocketed, which has some fans getting priced out and ticked off. I looked into the average price of a game in 2015 and found that it was $8 for lawn seats and $28 for lower dugout seats. Now the average price for lower dugout seats is $51.
There are a number of reasons tickets may have gotten so expensive. Dynamic pricing increases the prices for marquee games. For instance, Cronkite News reported that the LA Dodgers’ opening day ticket this year was $55, while the Giants’ was $17.
Another reason is that team tickets that are in high demand aren’t available except through third-party sellers, who tack on fees and taxes that sometimes can more than double the price of the ticket.
Some teams offer discounts for locals who want to attend Spring Training games. Now that I’m a local, I thought I would try to take advantage of the Giants’ advertised 40% discount to Arizonans for home games. I could only find 4 tickets available on the MLB ticket site. They were for either bleachers or lawn. However, the 40% discount was not available for them. By the way, the bleacher seats were $110, and the lawn “seats” were $59. (I put “seats” in quotes because even though you pay for seats, you don’t actually get any seats.) And this was for a split-squad game.
Understandably, a few events in recent years have impacted Spring Training. Just a week after I went to my first game in March of 2020, the entire country shut down due to Covid-19, and Spring Training was cancelled. The next year, Spring Training returned with limited capacity, and most ballparks only seated about 2,500 fans per game, only about 20% of normal capacity. The average ticket price for those games was $82, but it still wasn’t enough to make up for the losses caused by Covid.
In 2022, a labor dispute shortened the season, and the pandemic was still an issue, which discouraged some out-of-towners. Not only did baseball suffer, but so did the
various communities that count on Spring Training fans to boost their economy each year.
As with many products that went up in price due to the pandemic, it appears that Spring Training tickets did as well, and even though things are relatively back to normal, ticket pricing isn’t.
Some fans have commented on social media that the ticket prices are too high to watch “cast-offs, AAA and AA players.” Others say they have to skip the concessions. One fan was shocked that the price of beer was higher than the price of their ticket. Another couple complained about the extra fees, like a $10 “conveyance” fee to email their tickets to them.
Here in Arizona, Spring Training often gives locals the only opportunity to go to an outdoor major league baseball game, since the Diamondbacks play indoors. However, the extreme pricing seems more appropriate for an out-of-town tourist destination event, rather than an outing for locals.
I love baseball. I love the Giants. But with the prices of tickets, I’m not sure that attending in person is something I can afford anymore, or maybe I’ll go to fewer games. I’ve actually been enjoying all of the games on MLB Network this spring, so since I’m just a student, maybe that’s the best solution for me.
