Secondary Market Prices For 2018 World Series Tickets Are Down Over 25% This Week

While the 2018 World Series is the second time the Red Sox have hosted the Dodgers in Boston, it’s the first time they’ve played them at Fenway Park. In 1916, the Red Sox, just four years into their shiny new Fenway Park, chose to host the series at Braves Field, home of the then National League Boston Braves. The reason: Fenway wasn’t big enough. In the modern-era of home-field advantage, that’s almost unimaginable, but in 1916 the main concern was the gate…and it worked.

Not only did the Red Sox win, (behind Babe Ruth’s Game 3, 13-inning, one-run effort), but the 43,620 that saw the Red Sox clinch the series in Game 5 was a record at that point. While fans who witnessed it, paid $1 for their ticket, the 2018 edition will be a bit more expensive, but perhaps not as expensive as one would expect.

The current $1,627 average asking price at Fenway is tied for sixth highest since TicketIQ.com began tracking data in 2001. The $1,269 average at Chavez Ravine is the 10th highest over that period. While far from cheap, it’s a long way to prices for 2016 when the Chicago Cubs broke a 108-year World Series drought, as the below image shows.

When the Red Sox last beat the Dodgers (who were then called the Robins), they were just the 13th winner of the World Series. They would win one more in 1918 before Babe Ruth became a Yankee and kicked off the beginning of baseball’s modern era. After that, the sport’s next evolutionary step was a westward expansion, to solve the exact problem the Red Sox faced in the 1916 series: not enough seats. As the result of Dodgers move to LA, they can now pack in 56,000 fans per game, which is the most in baseball and almost 20,000 more than the 36,117 that the still-small Fenway Park can hold. In 1916, the Robins’ home park, Ebbets field, held just 21,000 fans.

While the Red Sox average price this season is higher than the Dodgers, the cheapest ticket to get into Dodger Stadium is actually almost twice as expensive as the cheapest ticket at Fenway, which is $350 for Game 1. That’s because there are many less ‘cheap’ seats like Bleachers at Fenway, which brings up the average.  

The priciest ticket for the series is for Game 7, if necessary. If it is in fact needed, it will be taking place on Halloween Night and is averaging $2,658. Game 6, at $2,072, is the next most expensive. The other five games have a current average asking prices of $1,363 or less.

For fans looking to get to the game, TicketIQ has a Low Price Guarantee on every game in the series.  TicketIQ also went so far as to track down a ticket from the 1916 series, which you can buy on eBay for $2,300.

The ticket, which is is good condition, was for game 3 of the series, in which the Red Sox clinched with a 4-1 win behind complete-game three-hitter from Ernie Shore. The face price for the ticket was $1, which means it’s had quite a run on the after-after market. For a game 6, this year at Fenway Park, the same $2,300 will get you no better than a Loge seat to what Vegas says is the most likely clinching game for the series.