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Along with the 2021 season ticket invoices received Monday, the Cubs included the following home-game schedule which includes tentative game times:
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There are 31 night games scheduled. Unfortunately, none of them are on Fridays as the city of Chicago continues its ridiculous ban on Friday night home games. That should have been repealed years ago and I continue to hope that it will be, at least to allow the Cubs to have Friday night home games after they play Thursday on the road. This happens generally two or three times a year; in 2021 it will happen four times. That would still seem to be workable, I’d think.
Of the 31 night games, 15 of them (all the weeknights in April, May and September) will be at 6:40 p.m. That’s a much better starting time given that many fans travel home to distant suburbs. With average game times creeping past three hours, that gives those fans a chance to get home before midnight. If 6:40 proves popular, perhaps the Cubs will consider moving all night games to that time after 2021.
At this time, the other 50 games all show 1:20 p.m. as the starting time. Some of these will change, as national TV networks have the right to change game times on Saturdays and Sundays. I would expect the Cubs to have two or three Sunday night home games on ESPN, and perhaps two Saturday nights on Fox-TV as part of its “Baseball Night In America” series. That would bring the night-game total to 35 or 36. This isn’t the 1980s anymore, and the Cubs should really be allowed to play 50-55 home night games, which would match what most other teams do.
The schedule above also shows the breakdown in ticket pricing tiers, of which there are six. Here are the number of games in each tier:
Diamond: 8
Marquee: 9
Platinum: 15
Gold: 21
Silver: 20
Bronze: 8
Forty-nine of the 81 games, or 60.4 percent, are in the three lowest-priced tiers. Coming up later this week, BCB reader Lifetime Cubs Fan will have some analysis of those pricing tiers and season-ticket prices announced by the Cubs Monday.