Red Sox Sell Out Record

[BuckyBuckner]

I guess the Red Sox have the record for the most consecutive sell outs in sports passing the Trail Blazers with 745 (or something like that). If anyone is impressed with this you should know it's a complete joke. Just take a look at how cheap tickets are being sold for on Stub Hub and you will realize that this is a total fabricated record by the organization. The word is that they have been selling any extra tickets for pennies on the dollar just to keep the streak alive.

I thought about going to the game today (until I saw that Harper wasn't playing) and this morning there were over 800 tickets available on Stub Hub going for as little as $10. Also, back in May there is a Tuesday game with a starting time at 3 or 4 pm on a rainy day. I checked mlb.com the day before and there were still tickets through the official site. Considering the start time and weather I can't imagine that those tickets were sold, especially when you could go to Stub Hub to buy them below face value. Oh but apparently they were sold, so they claim.

They had a great run of sell outs and should have been proud of that. When this streak was legit you knew the games were sold out because whenever anyone said they were going to a game the first response was always, "How did you get tickets?" They were just impossible to come by, unless you had money to pay scalper prices. Now it's clear fans just aren't as interested in going so there is no way this streak is legit. Why should I care? Good question. I suppose I shouldn't.

[owned]

Your seats in Boston are too steep. heck, the Dodgers have the best record in baseball (LOL) and you can get seats for 2, 3 and 4 on most non bobblehead games.

[Lurker765]

So people are now complaining that baseball tickets are too cheap?

If they sell the tickets then the tickets were sold, correct? What does it matter if the face price is $10 or $100 and then discounted down to $10?

[BuckyBuckner]

So people are now complaining that baseball tickets are too cheap?

If they sell the tickets then the tickets were sold, correct? What does it matter if the face price is $10 or $100 and then discounted down to $10?

It think you are missing the point. Stub Hub is a secondary ticket market. The Red Sox are not selling out their games, on the day of the game instead of leaving those tickets available to someone to walk up to the gate and buy one they sell them to Stub Hub just so they can keep their streak alive. It's a fabricated streak.

[dslaw]

It think you are missing the point. Stub Hub is a secondary ticket market. The Red Sox are not selling out their games, on the day of the game instead of leaving those tickets available to someone to walk up to the gate and buy one they sell them to Stub Hub just so they can keep their streak alive. It's a fabricated streak.

Is it the Sox selling to Stub Hub or have the Sox sold the tickets and some broker who bought 100 tix is selling them on Stub Hub to try to get rid of them? I am 3/4 of the country away so I have no idea. You said you looked at mlb.com once and they had tickets but I don't know if those are unsold tix or if that is a secondary market as well.

About all I do know in this situation is that some friends had to pay big bucks for terrible seats a few years ago. If I go to Fenway soon it sounds like I can get cheap tickets. Probably terrible seats but at least they would be cheap.

[BuckyBuckner]

Is it the Sox selling to Stub Hub or have the Sox sold the tickets and some broker who bought 100 tix is selling them on Stub Hub to try to get rid of them? I am 3/4 of the country away so I have no idea. You said you looked at mlb.com once and they had tickets but I don't know if those are unsold tix or if that is a secondary market as well.

About all I do know in this situation is that some friends had to pay big bucks for terrible seats a few years ago. If I go to Fenway soon it sounds like I can get cheap tickets. Probably terrible seats but at least they would be cheap.

My understanding is that tickets on mlb.com are directly from the team. It's where you would go before the season to buy tickets when they are put on sale so I believe they are directly from the team.

Does it matter who the Sox are selling the extra tickets to? On one hand it's smart to get something for the tickets, that's good business, but to call all these games a sell out seems really disingenuous. Sunday morning Stub Hub had over 800 tickets available for the 1:35 game that day, there is no way they sold all those tickets.

It is very possible you could get some cheap seats soon. Obviously it depends on who they are playing and if you are willing to wait until the day before or even the day of. The good seats are still going to be expensive but others should be reasonable. Shoot me a PM if you want any input of sections. The roof seats off first base are a nice place to watch the games.

[The Dane]

My understanding is that tickets on mlb.com are directly from the team. It's where you would go before the season to buy tickets when they are put on sale so I believe they are directly from the team.

This is how I understand it as well. A ticket on StubHub is a sold seat as far as they are concerned, so if they "sell" 800 tickets to StubHub for $1 each, they are getting their sell-outs. The walk-ups lose out, and the plan-ahead fans are screwed too, because those StubHub seats aren't likely available until right before gameday. So, if I were to take a trip to Boston on such-and-such a day and were to buy tickets, I'd have to pay full price, when it is possible that all the seats around me are available on StubHub for a fraction of the cost just as my plane touches down in Beantown.

Pretty cheesy, but I think it is standard practice. I think they should count the turnstyles and be done with it. But I also think the single unsold seats don't count in their figuring, so even legitimate sell-outs are not really 100% sold out, because there will be many random single seats scattered all over and those are nearly unsellable because so few people want to go to a game and sit alone. They just don't count them, I guess... or just sell them to StubHub at the last minute.

Fenway looks pretty full most days, but Dodger Stadium is hilarious with this. Several times I've been sitting in my section ALL ALONE with the park about 1/5 full just as they announce a sell-out on the scoreboard. I go often to Giants and A's games which seem more legit. Giants games are always packed, so I just go with whatever they say. A's games are always vacant, so often they don't even mention how many are in attendance.

[swampdragon]

The other question is
WHO is selling these tickets so cheaply on stubhub? and where did they buy them? and for how much?

Can a broker buy season tickets then sell the premium games at a big enough profit to pay for the loss on the crappy games?
or do they get them discounted from the home team directly?
or is the home team themselves selling the tickets so that they get bodies in the seats for concessions (not necessarily a red sox function - but Nets tickets could be bought for a buck) It is unlikely that an individual was selling tickets for a buck (it wouldnt be worth his time and aggravation for that buck)

[DJBeasties]

As a Red Sox fan, this "streak" is increasingly becoming lame and seems desperate. That and 'Sweet Caroline' are jut really annoying.

[The Dane]

The other question is
WHO is selling these tickets so cheaply on stubhub? and where did they buy them? and for how much?

My guess is it is the team themselves, probably through some intermediary. For example, I know that donated tickets count as sold tickets as well. When I was a kid, my girlfriend's older sister worked in a group home and would often (like every-game-kind-of-often) get tickets to Angels games, like huge piles of tickets, way more than they could ever use. So, me and my girlfriend could go to Angels games for free. We didn't live too far and could easily hop on the Santa Ana river trail and bike there in the 30 minutes if we had to. Neither of us cared much about baseball, but we would go, sit in the nosebleed seats and make out. We must have done that 100 times over three years. And if our heavy petting helped the Angels feel better about their attendance totals, then I was happy to help.

[virgonomic]

My guess is it is the team themselves, probably through some intermediary. For example, I know that donated tickets count as sold tickets as well. When I was a kid, my girlfriend's older sister worked in a group home and would often (like every-game-kind-of-often) get tickets to Angels games, like huge piles of tickets, way more than they could ever use. So, me and my girlfriend could go to Angels games for free. We didn't live too far and could easily hop on the Santa Ana river trail and bike there in the 30 minutes if we had to. Neither of us cared much about baseball, but we would go, sit in the nosebleed seats and make out. We must have done that 100 times over three years. And if our heavy petting helped the Angels feel better about their attendance totals, then I was happy to help.

Seems like a long way to go to make out. Awesome story though.

The Red Sox have released tickets on game day for years. I went last year and got seats on the Green Monster at face. They were going for 3X on stubhub, and I avoided the online marketplace.

[Fresno Bob]

The Giants have sold 30K per game of season tickets, the max mlb will allow (the stadium only holds 41k)

[SeaDogStat]

For the record, the Red Sox sold out long ago...

[heyelander]

Phil's record may be coming to an end. I'm sure the season tickets are maxed out as well, but they have regularly been selling 3+k extra tickets as standing room only for the last 3 years. The SRO have been dwindling, and this next home stand may be the death knell for their sell-out streak as well.

[The Dane]

Seems like a long way to go to make out.

Well, we were kids and there were few places more private than the outfield high-rises in Anaheim in the early 80s. One of our first "dates" was there, so we just kept going back for romantic repetition.