The high cost of being a Cubs fan
There's still time for Cubs fans to buy good seats for tonight's playoff opener at Wrigley Field. But it might require a small loan.
Tickets for the games tonight and Saturday night against the San Francisco Giants are far and away the most in-demand and expensive of any in the four divisional playoff series, based on the high prices that Chicago baseball fans have been paying online.
Nate Rattner, a content analyst for SeatGeek.com, said that as of Thursday, the median sale price was $363 for Game 1 seats and $416 for Game 2.
That's about twice as much as fans in another other city are paying.
The next highest? Tickets for the Cubs-Giants games when their series shifts to San Francisco beginning Monday. Tickets for those games are going for a median price of $186. Next is the $177 being paid for tickets to see the Boston Red Sox and Cleveland Indians face off in Fenway Park next week.
The least expensive seats can be found at the Ballpark in Arlington, where Texas Rangers tickets are being sold for an average of $102 per seat.
It's not just for the playoffs that Cubs fans have been paying high prices.
The average regular season ticket at Wrigley this year sold for a record-high of $57 on the online secondary market, Rattner said.
"The Cubs are definitely the hot ticket this year," Rattner said.
Should the Cubs defy their history and make it to the World Series for the first time since 1945, Rattner predicts prices will soar.
When the New York Mets hosted the Kansas City Royals in Game 3 of the World Series last year, tickets were selling for an average $1,205 - the highest recorded by SeatGeek since 2010.
Based on the current market for Cubs World Series tickets, that record likely would be shattered.
"I'd expect Cubs tickets to be more in the $2,000 to $3,000 range," Rattner said. "Of course it'd be easier to project if there was something to compare it to."
SeatGeek.com lists tickets from major websites like UberSeat, TN Direct, TicketCity and Fanxchange, and ticket sellers can set whatever prices they wish.
Some amounts are extraordinarily high. One seller is listing four tickets in the left-field bleachers for a Cubs World Series home game at more than $10,000 apiece.
"Those would be record-setters," Rattner said. "There very well may be some fans who are listing their tickets for a certain price, and if their tickets go unsold, they will go to the game."