Attending baseball games has steep price

By David Mullen

At what point does a baseball game become too expensive for a family to attend? 

I joined the Texas Rangers Opening Day crowd of 37,587 at Globe Life Field in Arlington on March 27. As trivial as the game results — it counts as one game in a 162-game season — Opening Day remains special. It reflects a new beginning. 

Hope is in the air, along with the aroma of chicken, ribs and sausages grilling on barbeques at parking lot tailgate parties. Fans are excited, players look pristine in new uniforms and the stadiums are dressed up like a Senior Prom venue. Globe Life Field was sparkling clean and glowing from top to bottom, ready to welcome wide-eyed fans. 

People are willing to pay more for the privilege of going to Opening Day. I have been to more than 40 Opening Day games in my lifetime, including in California, Texas and Monterrey, Mexico. In 1999, MLB held its first Opening Day game outside of the U.S. or Canada when the San Diego Padres faced the Colorado Rockies at the Estadio de Beisbol Monterrey and I was there. 

The onset of an NFL, NHL or NBA season is not held with the same reverence as the first game of the baseball season. The designation of “Opening Day” is immediately associated with MLB. Baseball owns it. 

No one claims with such pride and honor that they attended Opening Day for the Dallas Cowboys. In the NFL, the season begins on a Thursday and extends through late Monday night. The NFL doesn’t have an Opening Day; they have an Opening Extended Weekend. 

Football, basketball and hockey “start” the season. Baseball “opens” the season, as if opening the door to reveal surprising outcomes ahead.

Recently, many sports franchises have instituted a ticket strategy called “dynamic pricing,” where a team adjusts prices for tickets based on factors like importance of the game, opponents (to see the Yankees play costs more than to see the White Sox) or time of the season. Summer tickets are more valuable than spring tickets because school is out and many families are on vacation. Also, teams have companies like Ticketmaster, which inflate the ticket prices with service fees, now managing their ticket inventory.   

I paid more than $200 for a dynamically priced Opening Day seat at Globe Life Field in the second level behind home plate. The same seat is around $75 for a weekday game in May. Factor in $100 for parking, $10 for a 12-ounce non-alcoholic beer and a $5 program, and my rather modest Opening Day expenses approached $400 for one person. Extrapolating my experience into a family of four, it is likely that they would have to pay more than $1,000 to attend Opening Day in worse seats, and not much less than that total amount to see the Angels play the Rangers on a Tuesday night in August.

Not to appear “Pollyannaish,” but there were Saturdays as a teenager in Oakland that I could take public transportation to and from the Oakland Coliseum, sit in the bleachers behind a young Reggie Jackson and nurse a soda for a few innings for less than $2. Bleacher seats were 75 cents for kids 13 and under.

The online gaming site bookies.com recently issued a report of the average costs to attend an MLB game in 2025. The report stated that, “on average, a family of four will spend $208 on four of the cheapest available tickets, a parking spot, two beers, two sodas and four hot dogs.” That’s an increase of $20 over 2025. The Rangers are in the middle of the pack, with an estimated cost of $204 for a family of four.

On the high end, bookies.com estimates that a family attending a Los Angeles Dodgers game in Chavez Ravine will pay $400. A family attending a Cincinnati Reds game at the Great American Ballpark will pay $125 on average. The Dodgers have Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and offer ideal weather conditions. The Reds do not.

High parking costs play a factor in cites like Boston, Chicago and San Francisco. Parking at a game is much less expensive in Detroit, Cleveland and Denver. Beer prices are high in Tampa and Miami and much less in St. Louis and Seattle. Hot dogs are a bargain in Atlanta and a delicacy in Minneapolis.

The point is that baseball teams are pricing themselves out of their share of the shrinking entertainment dollar. Everything costs more, including the cost of watching baseball games on TV. The bankruptcy of many regional sports networks, including the Rangers, require fans to pay more to watch games on TV. By pricing families out of an opportunity to attend a few baseball games a year reflects immediate greed over long term growth. Unlike other sports, baseball needs the in-game experience for new generations to embrace it. Otherwise, kids will call the game too slow or too old fashioned and reach for their video game console.  

Miami, Cincinnati, Colorado, the White Sox and Angels all have gameday tickets for less than $20. You get what you pay for, but you get baseball. Anything can happen. I fear the days have arrived when families can’t afford to go to a baseball game, let alone experience an Opening Day baseball game. That will be when the thrill of attending a baseball game becomes archaic.