MLB teams now have permission to offer ticket refunds

Major League Baseball went on hiatus due to the novel coronavirus pandemic on March 12, when they cancelled the rest of spring training and announced the start of the 2020 season would be delayed.

Until now, games on the Cubs (and other teams’) schedules had simply been listed as “postponed”:

Now, according to Bill Shaikin in the Los Angeles Times, refunds for 2020 baseball tickets could be coming soon:

With more than 400 major league games already called off because of the coronavirus outbreak, the league Tuesday reversed a policy that had restricted fans from widespread refunds on tickets to those games.

On a conference call, Major League Baseball informed team officials that they no longer needed to advise fans to hold onto those tickets. The decision clears the way for teams to announce refund policies for the games.

Last week, a report from Bruce Levine indicated that the Cubs (and White Sox) were considering offering season-ticket holders 5 percent interest if the STH allowed the teams to roll over the money into 2021 season tickets. If that happens, I’m inclined to do it — where else can I earn 5 percent on my money this year?

Of course, single-game ticket holders and group ticket holders will have to get complete refunds. Games that have already been cancelled — such as the MLB London Series — have already been refunded. I received my London ticket refund within about 10 days of the announcement that those games had been cancelled. Same for the cancelled Cubs spring training games.

No teams have announced anything official about ticket refunds, but I would expect that with today’s report we will be hearing about that fairly soon. When the Cubs make an official announcement about ticket refunds, whether for STH or for single-game or group ticket buyers, I’ll post the information here.