The Cubs have sent postseason invoices to season ticket holders

Invoices for 2023 postseason tickets arrived in Cubs season-ticket holder inboxes Wednesday afternoon.

The team then went out and posted the most dramatic, exciting win they’ve had at Wrigley Field since... well, maybe since David Bote’s ultimate grand slam. Which happened in the last year there was a postseason game at Wrigley, 2018. So the timing couldn’t have been better.

The package includes 13 games. The fact sheet received says that the third wild card game would also serve as a third division series game, if necessary. That’s true because if the Cubs were to be a wild-card host and had to play a third game and won it, they wouldn’t be a team with home field in the division series anyway, as the other two division winners would by definition be higher seeds.

The total cost for a bleacher postseason package is $1,943. That’s $171 higher than the last postseason tickets STH paid for, in 2019, though of course the Cubs missed the playoffs that year. All of the higher price can be accounted for by the fact that STH are paying for two more games this time, as there were only 11 games in the postseason package in 2019.

The pricing breaks down this way on a per-game basis:

Wild card/division series: $91
NLCS: $136
World Series: $236

Those prices are actually fairly reasonable, largely because they are set by Major League Baseball, which does consult with the teams but in the end has control over pricing.

Postseason payments from Cubs season-ticket holders are due Friday, September 15, after which I would assume there will be some sort of public sale for whatever tickets remain, and even though the STH base is somewhat smaller than it was in 2019, that isn’t likely to be a large number of tickets.

Along with the postseason invoices, season-ticket holders also received renewal invoices for 2024 season tickets. Prices have gone up a bit; for my bleacher ticket the increase was 3.5 percent, which puts the pricing a bit less than it was in 2022. Most of the increase comes from shifting games among pricing tiers; the individual tier prices haven’t changed. Other areas of the ballpark have had different price increases, as noted in this Tribune article by Meghan Montemurro:

Cubs 2024 season tickets are increasing by an average of 3%, with upper-reserved outfield seeing the highest increase (4.8%) and club-box outfield the smallest (0.9%) while bleacher seats will see a 3.5% uptick.

Here is the breakdown of pricing tiers and dates for 2024:

There are currently 29 night games on the schedule, which is standard for this early in the scheduling process. Generally five to eight more are added for national TV purposes. The Cubs remind everyone that these are tentative and subject to change.

For those who pay for postseason tickets and opt to take a credit for unplayed postseason games, no additional payment for season tickets is due until January 17, 2024. For any STH who either forgo the postseason tickets, or elect a refund for unplayed games, they will have to pay a deposit on 2024 tickets by October 19, 2023.

Obviously it’s exciting to think about postseason baseball at Wrigley Field this fall. As noted above, there hasn’t been a postseason game at Wrigley in five years, and in addition, the Cubs haven’t won a postseason game since they beat the Dodgers in Game 4 of the 2017 NLCS. Here is the postseason schedule, as posted here earlier this month. If the Cubs are the N.L. Central champion or the first wild-card team, they would host all three games of a wild-card series October 3, 4 and 5. If they are the second or third wild-card team, they’d play a wild-card series entirely on the road on those three dates, and they’d have to win that series in order to get any home playoff games this year.

This sort of thing is always fun to think about and plan for. It’s great that we have the chance to do that this year. Let’s hope all this postseason planning matters, a few weeks from now.