Fans with deep pockets get the star treatment at the World Series

Hours before the Yankees opened their World Series homestand against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Monday, tickets ranged from $724 to $16,185 on resale giant StubHub.

They were asking prices, not necessarily sales, and ticket prices seemed to have fallen with the Yankees’ fortunes after they lost the first two games of the series. But to get into a packed stadium for the Yankees’ first World Series home game since 2009, most fans had to pay dearly.

The low end rose to $992 with fees and didn’t actually buy a seat; rather, it purchased a Pinstripe Pass, which granted access to “non-designated standing-only locations throughout the Stadium” or at a variety of “social gathering locations,” according to the Major League Baseball website. The website strictly noted that Pinstripe Pass holders “may not occupy ticket seats”, cafe seats or portable folding chairs.

The high end, which came to $21,854 with fees, bought a seat in sports paradise: Row 2, Section 18 of the Legends Suite, “curated for those who demand the best in baseball.”

Plush, but expensive

For the price of a decent used car, or about three years of instate tuition at a SUNY college, fans in a Legends Suite got an actual seat near the Yankees dugout — nicely padded — with benefits including use of a private stadium entrance and all-inclusive food and non-alcoholic beverages. It was possible for a Legends suite guest to get a hot dog, but judging by the photo gallery on the MLB website, it probably wasn’t easy: all the free cupcakes, steak, sushi and crab claws would get in the way.

Ticket marketplace Vivid Seats put the average ticket price sold for the game at $1,682, the highest in the series so far. At game time, another marketplace said in a press release Monday afternoon, the Yankees’ 0-2 series start meant ticket prices at the stadium were “crashing,” with the lowest prices down from $1,745 last Wednesday to $854 Monday and top-priced tickets down from more than $27,000 last week to $16,167.

In the Bronx Monday night, there were a few fans like Elbi Cho, 49, a Mets-loving used car salesman from Queens, waiting for the game to start and for resale market prices to drop. He refused to pay more than a few hundred dollars. “This is not my team,” he said outside Yankee Stadium as the game approached.

Most people cheerfully said they had spent thousands.

“I paid $6,000 a ticket and bought five,” said New Jersey resident Mark Lauber, who had come with his sons and their girlfriends. “I’ve been to three World Series when the Yankees won, and you can’t put a price on that. It’s so exciting. It’s something I’ll never forget — I was at the ’77 World Series when Reggie Jackson hit three home. runs. … You can’t put a price on it.”

Once in a lifetime

Jose and Alma Hernandez, Dodgers fans from Orange County, Calif., paid $2,200 each for seats near the press box behind home plate.

“We’ve decided along the way — we’ve been married 24 years — that we want to give each other experiences,” said Jose Hernandez, 50, a lawyer. He and Alma Hernandez, 51, an umpire, start watching baseball in spring training and sometimes buy season tickets, he said. A series like this, like Halley’s comet, can occur once in a lifetime.

“We’re not going to see another series like this,” he said. But, “there’s always a limit. I don’t know what it is right now, but there’s always a limit.”

Joanne Carducci, the social media personality JoJoFromJerz, said she paid $3,200 for tickets for herself and her 15-year-old son, Leo.

“I’ve been taking my kids to Yankees games since 2019, since I first got separated from their dad, and I couldn’t afford any tickets at all,” she said. “I was supposed to be sitting in the 400s in the clouds and it was so high I was scared. I promised myself that in a very short time I would be sitting low and I worked and worked and five years later, I is at the World Series with my son.”

Said Leo: “We came all this way and it’s amazing.”

In the Ford Field MVP seats, not far from the field but above the Legends area, Elliott Kreppel, 56, a tax firm owner from Monroe Township, New Jersey, said he did not know how much his tickets had cost and that it didn’t matter. He came with his son, Jake, 25.

“Money comes and goes, but memories are forever.” Also: he sits in the Legends during the regular season, and the free food “after a while it’s too much … the lobster, it’s just too much.”