To get a ticket to the World Series, you have to fork up some serious cash. For the 2018 World Series, the face value of tickets run from $141 to $486 in Boston. Tickets on resale markets can be even more expensive. At the time of writing, the cheapest second-hand tickets for game 3 of the series in Los Angeles were $362 on the ticket resale website SeatGeek, with the best seats priced at thousands of dollars.
The best time to buy
So if you are in the market for a World Series ticket, when is the best time to buy? Well, you should probably buy as soon as you find tickets where you are comfortable with their price. It’s not entirely predictable when different types of tickets will become available and if you really want to go to the game, you have to make sure you have your way in. But from what we know about how ticket prices change ahead of an event, it can pay to be patient.
What the data show
According to data from SeatGeek, the price of the average ticket purchased typically falls as the game nears. For example, while the average ticket sold for game 1 of the 2018 World Series in Boston sold for nearly $1,200 four days before the game, tickets sold the day of the game average only about $630. A similar patterns has held for most first home games of World Series since 2014, and the price of Super Bowl tickets also show the same trajectory.
One reason tickets may get cheaper as the game nears is that ticket resellers need to slash prices to make sure they make money. Sports tickets lose all of their value after game. Yet it’s also possible that this trend is a result of a different phenomenon. The higher sale prices further from the event may be a result of more premium tickets being sold in advance and cheaper tickets being sold closer to game day.
Still, unless you need to see the game in person and it doesn’t matter where you sit, the data suggests waiting to the last minute.