SPORTS

You paid what for that World Series ticket?

Kary Booher
News-Leader

About seven years ago, a $35 ticket purchased from a scalper just outside of Kansas City's Kauffman Stadium would mean a seat about six rows from the visitor's on-deck circle.

Those days are long gone. A ticket in the same area — for the Kansas City Royals' first World Series game in 29 years on Tuesday night — was going for $959 over the weekend on the site SeatGeek.com.

That's flat wrong, said Springfield resident and lifelong Royals fan Ethan Bryan, who argues that real fans who have supported the team should not be fleeced by online ticket-sellers.

Unfortunately, the online brokers have the law on their side, thanks to the Missouri Legislature in 2007 lifting a ban on ticket scalping.

"The ticket that was $20 in the regular season and now $60, I get that," Bryan said, referring to the team's cost. "But you have third-party sites that can make a 300 percent profit. That's hard to swallow in a consumer, free-market economy."

The Royals will play Tuesday and Wednesday at home and possibly host the San Francisco Giants again on Oct. 28 and Oct. 29 in a best-of-7 series. Without question, World Series tickets are the most expensive in history, according to Connor Gregoire, a spokesman for SeatGeek.com.

The average ticket per game at Kauffman Stadium is: $1,109 for Game 1; $1,027 for Game 2; and then $1,168 and $1,283 for Games 6 and 7, according to SeatGeek.

Even the cost of upper-deck seats were sky-high, running about $500 on StubHub.com late Saturday night.

The Royals sold out World Series tickets a couple of weeks ago, although fans first were required to enter a lottery in hopes of winning the right to buy a ticket.

The only opportunities now are through online ticket-buying sites, friends or the Royals' Facebook page and Twitter accounts, where the team offers free tickets.

Bryan, for instance, scored two free tickets to Games 3 and 4 of the ALCS through a Royals Twitter trivia contest.

Ticket-buying sites such as StubHub.com, however, clearly got their hands on many tickets and re-sell at a marked-up price, using the age-old method — supply and demand.

Had the Royals lost Game 4 of the ALCS last Wednesday, a ticket to Game 5 the next day wasn't cheap: $104 to $123 — for standing room-only.

Meanwhile, World Series ticket prices that day skyrocketed to $900 for nose-bleed seats.

"It's so tempting," Missouri State University teacher Jeremy Neely wrote in a Twitter exchange with the News-Leader. "How I'd again love to drive back and teach my 8:00 class at MSU on 3 (hours) sleep and victory fumes."

Want more sticker shock?

Parking costs $25, up from $15 in the wild card game.