MLB has announced that it is giving fans the chance to reserve their postseason tickets right now for a small fee. As wonderful as that may sound, you need to look at the bigger picture. The truth is only eight teams are going to make the playoffs, and everyone else is just throwing their money away.
For one, if you pay to reserve tickets to any game in the postseason and your team never makes it there, you’ll never see that money again. Or maybe your team does make it but gets annihilated, well then I hope you didn’t buy tickets to the ALCS/NLCS and the World Series too, because then you’re out of luck and money.
MLB is being sly about all this because at first glance it doesn’t look like that big of a deal. It’s only $10 to reserve tickets for the ALDS or NLDS. You want to go to the ALCS/NLCS too? Sure, why wouldn’t you? Well that’s just a small fee of $15. Well you might as well reserve tickets to the World Series too while you’re at it. I mean you’d be dummy not to right? Dude, it’s just $20 and you’re guaranteed a seat for the World Series; you’re making an investment in your sports future.
Eh, not really … you’re more than likely just giving MLB money. At the very least you gave them $35 in reservation fees alone. That doesn’t go towards the cost of your ticket — you still have to pay for that. There’s a lot of things that need to fall into place here for all of this to work out in favor of a given fan:
1. Your team needs to make it to the playoffs.
2. You need to be able to afford the tickets.
3. Your team needs to get as far into the playoffs as the level for which you reserved tickets.
Honestly the most crushing thing about all this isn’t really the money aspect. If my Chicago White Sox had a legitimate shot of making the playoffs (and they could if they get back on the timely hitting train they were on just a few days ago) then yes, I would spend the $10 to reserve seats for a game. But when the day comes to get those tickets and all that’s left are the $500 seats behind home plate and I can’t afford that, I’d be crushed. You’re leading people on and taking their money and that’s not fair. You’re “promising” them a seat, but you’re not promising a price. Figuring their fans will pay any price for playoff tickets, the New York Yankees wisely decided not to be a part of this.
Maybe they shouldn’t introduce this so early in the season. I think to make it fair (not like any greedy people care about that), they should wait until about two weeks prior to the playoffs beginning before allowing fans to reserve tickets. That way the fans of teams out of contention won’t lose the fee money. The way the system is set up right now seems like a scam and I believe the only stealing in baseball should be of the bases.
Sources:
Postseason Ticket Reservation System Introduced [MLB.com]
