World Series Ticket Prices Soar as Dodgers Set to Face Off Against Yankees

Maren Angus-Coombs | Oct 24, 2024

Brad Penner-Imagn Images

The stage is set for the World Series: the Dodgers versus the New York Yankees, two of baseball's top three biggest spenders.

And it’s not just the teams — fans are also spending big on tickets for this highly anticipated showdown.

Tickets for this year's World Series between the Yankees and Dodgers are shaping up to be the priciest ever. The average price on the secondary market is around $1,703, just beating the 2016 record. To put it in perspective, that's more than double last year's average ticket price, according to reseller TickPick.

StubHub told the Los Angeles Times on Monday its sales revenue for this year’s World Series already exceeds its sales revenue for last year’s Arizona Diamondbacks-Texas Rangers World Series, even though this series does not start for four days. It's also already is four times more than the company generated for the 2022 Houston Astros-Philadelphia Phillies World Series.

For fans heading to Dodger Stadium for this series, ticket prices might feel like a deal compared to Yankee Stadium. The Yankees haven’t been to the World Series since 2009, while this is the Dodgers’ fourth trip since then.

On Monday afternoon, the cheapest ticket for Game 3 at Yankee Stadium was $1,536 on Vivid Seats — and that’s for standing room only, not an actual seat.

There are a few reasons behind the sky-high ticket prices. Both the Dodgers and Yankees come from two of the largest markets in the U.S. and boast some of the biggest names in baseball, like Shohei Ohtani for L.A. and Aaron Judge for New York. Plus, it's the first time these two teams have faced off in the World Series since 1981 — over 40 years in the making.

All this is happening despite Dodger Stadium having a capacity of 56,000, the largest in MLB, and Yankee Stadium not far behind with 46,543 seats.

While MLB, the Dodgers, and the Yankees utilize different ticket-management strategies, the resale market for the World Series tends to be less regulated and more organic compared to other major sporting events like the Super Bowl.

“You have the two biggest markets and all these big stars, so these are very powerful drivers. This has also been a drought for the Yankees,” Jesse Lawrence, TicketIQ founder and CEO, told Front Office Sports, in part referencing the team’s 15-year absence from the World Series that is now ending. “The New York market is really coming off the sidelines and is fueling a lot of demand."