Miss Out On Cubs Playoff Tickets? Road Games Might Be Your Best Bet

Tickets for National League Division Series games at Wrigley Field went on sale Wednesday morning to lucky winners of the Cubs playoff lottery. Over a million people signed up for the lottery, and perhaps 4,000 or 5,000 tickets per game were on sale. Obviously, that means most who wanted tickets didn’t get the chance to buy them. If you didn’t have any luck in the sale this morning, this post might help you, if you’re willing to travel. In some cases travel to another city and buying tickets might be cheaper than getting them for Wrigley games on the secondary market.

For example, there are still tickets remaining for all the potential NLCS games at Dodger Stadium — right on the Dodgers website. If you’re interested and can afford it, why not?

Unless you’re a season-ticket holder, you’re going to pay high prices to see the Cubs at Wrigley Field. BCB reader Lifetime Cubs Fan has a potential answer for you; he did some research into ticket prices on the secondary market for the Cubs’ possible opponents in all the playoff rounds and says you could get likely into road games for far less money than you can at Wrigley Field. Here’s his report.

It is well known that the Cubs have a fan following that spans the nation. Based on observations I have made on pricing at other stadiums (all pricing is as of Monday 9/26), I believe Cubs fans will make their presence felt at every playoff game this year. In 2003, I was fortunate enough to attend games in Atlanta and Florida (paying face value, interestingly enough, for all three games attended) and all of those games had a “home game” feel to them (and were really fun to attend) as tens of thousands of Cubs fans were there as well.

Take a look at potential NLDS opponents. Watching them play the Cubs at Wrigley will be expensive if you are not a season ticket holder or fortunate to get tickets via the lottery. However, if you live close to, or can travel to, St. Louis, San Francisco, or New York, you could get in much cheaper. (Graphs below depict three types of seats: Premium, Bleachers, cheapest ticket).

When it gets to the NLCS, prices for watching the Cubs at Wrigley increase substantially. However, I was surprised to see how reasonably (relatively) you could see a game at Nationals Park or Dodger Stadium (since I live in Southern California, I am hoping for a Cubs / Dodgers NLCS as hotels and airfare for me are not required). It is during the NLCS that I think many fans will take the action to spend approximately $1,500 to travel to the visiting park and see two games, vs. spending twice that amount for one World Series game. Also, L.A. and D.C. are great cities to visit — there’s plenty to see and do while not attending the games.

Lastly, the World Series. Since there are several possible opponents, I just looked for the cheapest non-SRO seat for any of the games in the World Series. They are depicted below. As it stands now, you could attend Games 1 and 2 at the American League parks, pay for travel and lodging, and with the exception of Seattle, have plenty of money to spare when compared to watching the Cubs at Wrigley.

So based on these observations, I have a question – how many of you BCBers have ‘hedged’ / willing to ‘hedge’ and purchase tickets to an opponent prior to the Cubs and the opponent clinching the series to advance to that round? In my opinion, if the Cubs were to win series and advance, prices at opponent’s ballparks will likely increase significantly.