Get Your Hot Tickets Here
Baseball season is in full swing, and I hope to get to a game in September between the New York Mets against their long-term rivals the Atlanta Braves. I expect the two to be locked in a tight pennant race, with tickets at a premium, so I scouted out the best prices available online.
The first place I went was MLB.com, the website of Major League Baseball. Not a lot of tickets were available; the game is already close to a sellout, I'm sure. Two “Loge Reserved” seats in the bottom third of Shea Stadium - neither the best nor most expensive seats in the house - were $36 each. Add on a fee of $5.25 and an order charge of $4.50, and the total for a pair of tickets just beyond the “skin” (dirt) part of the infield on the third base side of the field is $87.
Could I do better? After googling “baseball tickets” I found a long queue of ticket resellers and brokers who mediate between buyers and sellers. Here is my list of the top five ticket services found online:
1. Tickco.com – Tickets: $69 apiece. Processing fee of 10%: $13.80. Fedex shipping: $15. Total: $166.80.
2. Buyselltix.com – Tickets: $50 apiece. Processing fee: $20. Two-day shipping: $13.50. Total: $133.50
3. Coasttocoasttickets.com – Tickets: $44 apiece. Service charge: $9.68. Shipping: $15. Total: $112.68
4. Stubhub.com – Tickets: $49 apiece. Service charge of 10% = $9.80. Shipping = $12. Total: $119.80
5. GoTickets.com – Tickets: $75 apiece. No service charge. Shipping: $10. Total: $160.
Bottom line: MLB, where you can buy the tickets directly from the team, are clearly the least expensive (I can't say cheapest, for $87 for a pair of tickets is nearing Broadway prices.). One reason is that MLB allows you to print out your own tickets, which the third-party brokers obviously can't do.
However, these brokers may have tickets that, officially at least, are already sold. So, they may be the only place to turn for a truly hot ticket.
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