The Brewers are having a Wisconsin residents only presale for Cubs games

If you are a Blackhawks fan, you likely recall the Nashville Predators’ attempt to keep Hawks fans from buying tickets for games between the two teams in Nashville.

The Cubs’ I-94 rivals, the Milwaukee Brewers, are attempting the same thing this year in an attempt to keep the Cubs-centric crowds from filling Miller Park:

The Milwaukee Brewers today announced the opportunity for Brewers fans to purchase tickets to any of the 10 home games against the Chicago Cubs this season. The Crew wants Miller Park to be filled with loud and proud Wisconsin fans when they cheer on the boys of summer against their division foe this year.

Beginning tomorrow, February 9 at 9 a.m. CT, and continuing through February 15 at 11:59 p.m. CT, residents of Wisconsin can go to Brewers.com/wisconsinpresale to purchase up to eight tickets to any of the 10 home games against the Chicago Cubs. Interested fans must have a valid Wisconsin address when purchasing tickets.

Miller Park’s listed capacity is 41,900 and many games between the Cubs and Brewers there have drawn more, including three last year that had an announced attendance of over 44,000. If you went to those games or watched them on TV, you no doubt heard the loud presence of Cubs fans, making them sound like home games at Wrigley Field. Ryan Braun got loudly booed there, which has to be unsettling for him.

Whether this kind of thing will work or not remains to be seen. The Milwaukee Bucks tried this sort of thing during the Michael Jordan era, as tickets in Chicago to see the Bulls in that era were hard to come by. They didn’t succeed in that, either, as many Bulls fans found ways to get tickets in Milwaukee.

In general, the Brewers price tickets to Cubs games much higher than most other games, and you can understand why. The 10 Cubs/Brewers games at Miller Park in 2017 drew 403,052, an average of 40,335 per date. The Brewers’ other 71 home games drew a total of 2,224,353, or 31,329 per date. That implies that Cubs fans were responsible for around 9,000 extra fans per date at Miller Park in 2017. That figure was likely higher in previous years; the Brewers’ total attendance of 2,627,705 was over 300,000 more than 2016. That’s surely because of the Brewers suddenly being a contending team.

The higher price of the tickets for Cubs/Brewers games at Miller Park likely means this presale won’t generate the sales the Brewers think it will, or Wisconsinites will buy them up and try to make some money off Cubs fans on the secondary market.

There are plenty of Cubs fans in Wisconsin, too. Many of them will probably take advantage of this presale, or perhaps buy tickets for their friends and relatives who live in the Chicago area. Here’s the direct link to the sale; no prices have yet been posted.

If you want to buy tickets for Cubs games at Miller Park, you can purchase a four-game “flex plan” which is available now. Three Cubs games are available this way; you’d only have to buy one other game to get the tickets you want for Cubs games in Milwaukee.

I’m still expecting huge numbers of Cubs fans at the 10 games at Miller Park this year. We won’t have to wait too long to find out, as the Cubs begin a four-game series there on Thursday, April 5.