Best Deal in Baseball?

Can anyone beat the $250 season ticket? According to my research at MLB.com, no they can’t. At least no team that has released their schedule has beaten that price yet. There are several teams that have not yet released their season ticket prices that have a shot, such as the Marlins and Royals. The teams that come closest to beating the Braves’ season ticket deal are the Rangers and Rockies at $328 and $405 respectively.

I have compiled the following chart of the lowest season ticket price offered by each team, and I will update it as more information becomes available. I did not include partial plans on this list, only the full season ticket packages.

Team = Lowest Season Ticket Price
Angels = n/a
Astros = $747
A’s = $738
Blue Jays = $645
Braves = $249
Brewers = $648
Cards = $810
Cubs = n/a
D-Rays = $486
D-Backs = $456
Dodgers = n/a
Giants = $840
Indians = $574
M’s = $1053
Marlins = n/a
Mets = n/a
Nats = $574
O’s = $873
Pads = $810
Phils = $1235
Pirates = n/a
Rangers = $328
Reds = $673
Rockies = $405
Royals = n/a
Tigers = $810
Twins = $200*
White Sox = $952
Yanks = n/a

This leads me to ask why, after winning 14 consecutive division titles, are the Braves offering such a discounted season ticket. And why aren’t more people talking about this? You would expect teams that lose year after year to offer discounted tickets, but this is the team with the longest regular season winning streak in professional sports. Is Atlanta really that bad of a baseball market?

Perhaps the Braves are borrowing a page from the Arthur Blank (owner of the Falcons) playbook. When he took over the team several years ago from disinterested owners, he offered fans who wanted to sit in the upper deck full season ticket packages that started at $100. This actually caused the Falcons to sell out just about every game every year since then. These Braves execs may be looking at that and thinking they can duplicate at least part of that success. It’s a whole lot harder to sell out 81 games verses 10, but in offering such an unheard of deal on season tickets they may get more people looking in their direction.

Anyway, I’ll be writing more on this as the season approaches, and as more thoughts on the possible significance of this come to me.


*Update: Thanks to Chuck T. for bringing to my attention that the Twins offer a 'Cheap Seats Special' season ticket for only $200. Here's another case of a winning and competitive club offering some of the cheapest tickets in baseball. There have been a bunch of similarities between the Braves and Twins starting with their worst to first seasons in ’91. They both have strong farm systems and are committed to building from within. And now both offer their fans great ticket deals (though it looks like the Twins were the first to do this). I may write some more on these similarities in the future. I wonder if a Twins fan with ‘Cheap Seats’ season tickets has a blog. I still find such amazingly cheap tickets, well, amazing (and if the Mets offered such a deal then it would be amazin’).