CLEVELAND — There’s a buzz in the air here. It’s undeniable. It’s in the stadium, of course, but on the streets and in the restaurants and in the Ubers as well. “You going to the game?” is a fairly common question. If you’re not wearing a cap or T-shirt to identify which team you’re pulling for it, it’s often followed by, “Are you a Chicago fan?”
Chicago Cubs fans have made their presence known around Cleveland, a city that’s about five hours by car from theirs. But no Cubs fan has invested more money to come to Cleveland for the World Series than the one who plopped down almost $50,000 for two tickets to World Series Game 7 on Wednesday night.
Stubhub confirmed to Yahoo Sports that an unidentified fan from Chicago paid $23,400 apiece for two box seats on the first-base line. You can buy two cars for that price.
Your first reaction upon seeing that is probably, “Wow, that much?” But consider what’s on the line for Cubs fans: Game 7 of the World Series, the team’s first since 1945 and a chance to end a championship drought that goes back 108 years. If you’ve got the means and you love the Cubs … hey, we get it, people do some crazy things in the name of sports fandom.
Not everyone is paying those prices for Game 7, of course. Stubhub says the cheapest ticket is $825 for standing room only while the median price for a ticket sold is $1,823. Hey, that’s still a decent vacation!
According to SeatGeek, this World Series has created an “unprecedented” level of demand for tickets. The average resale price for tickets on SeatGeek is $2,143 ($3,500 for the three games at Wrigley), which is higher than the previous record for a single game (Game 3 of the 2015 World Series in New York, which had an average price of $1,205).
Keep in mind, this isn’t all about the Cubs. The Indians are trying to break a 68-year World Series drought of their own, so their fans are eager, too. But it’s the Cubs fans who are responsible for most of the action on Stubhub and SeatGeek since the series was pushed to Game 7; on StubHub, as much as 60 percent of the ticket transactions are coming from Chicago, while on SeatGeek the number is 80 percent.
And it’s Cubs fans — the most beat down of any franchise in pro sports — you could most understand paying unsightly amounts to see the long-talked-about drought finally get stomped out.
It’s either that or hope Bill Murray just gives them a ticket.
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Mike Oz is the editor of Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at mikeozstew@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz
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