Dodgers' home opener tickets for sale: $8,644 each. In the bleachers
Would you pay $35,000 so your family of four could watch the Dodgers raise a championship banner for the first time in 32 years?
Now you can. Maybe.
The home opener at Dodger Stadium is always a tough ticket, even at full capacity, with sellouts all but assured and high prices on the resale market. If the Dodgers can open their stadium to fans at the start of the season, seating capacity would be significantly restricted, meaning intense demand for tickets would meet an extremely limited supply.
The Dodgers have not put single-game tickets on sale yet, and they do not yet have permission to play before fans. The Dodgers are working with the governor’s office and local public health officials on proposals for fans to attend games, team president Stan Kasten told season-ticket holders in a video Friday.
The uncertainty has not stopped some season-ticket holders from listing home opener tickets for sale in the secondary market, including StubHub and Vivid Seats.
On Monday afternoon, StubHub listed 20 tickets for sale for the April 9 home opener against the Washington Nationals, at prices ranging from $1,450 to $9,000, the latter price for a single seat on the reserve level.
Vivid Seats listed 94 tickets for sale, at prices ranging from $445 to $8,644. That last price was listed for three different groups of tickets, all in the left-field pavilion.
The Dodgers are not the party selling any of those tickets, a team official said. (The Dodgers do put tickets on the resale market.)
Why would a resale site allow tickets to be sold without knowing whether fans will be admitted?
“It is our common practice on StubHub to post an event once the event date is officially announced and confirmed,” StubHub spokeswoman Jessica Erskine Finn said. “The events listed on our site are currently part of MLB’s official schedule.”
Dodger Stadium’s capacity is listed at 56,000. If the Dodgers play to 20% of capacity — the initial step established under state guidelines — they could sell 11,200 tickets.
On Monday, the Dodgers declined to discuss how they might allocate tickets under a limited-capacity setup. It is possible that the seat a buyer purchases today on the resale market might not be available, with Major League Baseball directing teams to maintain social distance between groups of seats. It also is possible that the seat a buyer purchases today could be relocated elsewhere in the ballpark.
StubHub and Vivid officials said fans could request refunds if the seats they purchase turn out to be unavailable.
On the air
The Dodgers said SportsNet LA, the team-owned cable channel, would air live broadcasts of every spring training game. The Cactus League schedule opens Sunday.
The Dodgers’ radio homes, AM 570 (English) and AM 1020 (Spanish) also will air Sunday’s game. The radio stations will not air every spring game, but the Dodgers said fans could access a free streaming broadcast of every game by accessing the iHeartRadio app, then searching for “AM 570 LA Sports.”
Under the league’s health and safety protocols, with fewer minor leaguers in camp, exhibition games can be shortened to as few as five innings by mutual agreement of the managers. After the first two weeks of spring games, the minimum becomes seven innings.
May’s way
Dustin May started 10 games last season, tied for the team lead. He threw 56 innings, more than anyone on the team except Kershaw. He put up a 2.57 earned-run average.
On just about every other team, May would be a lock for the starting rotation. On the Dodgers, he would have been fighting for a spot even before the team signed Trevor Bauer.
In a video conference Monday, May said he took news of the Bauer signing in stride.
"I was excited,” he said. “It's always fun adding a Cy Young winner into the rotation."
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
