This was originally going to be an article titled, “Why spring training is dead to me”. I was going to discuss the reasons why I’ve basically given up on attending spring training games. One of the main factors was simply the cost, and there’s the general perception that it’s no longer a cheap alternative to regular season games. For example, a post just yesterday on Reddit: Spring training prices in AZ are INSANE this year, complaining that “Lawn tix on a Saturday afternoon at Scottsdale Stadium
are $75 EACH. Resales are over $100. For a piece of wet grass and mud to sit your bum on.”
However, that does appear to be the result of a couple of factors. Firstly, it applies only to the game against the D-backs on March 14. For the game this Saturday, against the Rangers, the same seats are $50. Still not exactly cheap, but considerably cheaper. Weekday games are less still: the Monday game that week is $27. Secondly, it’s Scottsdale, where any Phoenix resident knows, everything is simply more expensive. Go elsewhere, and you can save even more money. In particular, this Saturday, you can see the Giants play the Diamondbacks at Salt River Fields – and lawn tickets there are $26, barely one-third of the cost about which the poster was complaining.
Now, there’s no doubt spring training is not like it used to be. I have vague memories – though I am unable to find actual documentation to prove it – of regularly priced $5 lawn seats for spring training games. Those days are gone. For those in the know, the Arizona Fall League is the far superior alternative, offering much better value, with the ability to sit anywhere you want in the park for $14. Though even that is more than twice the $6 price it was in 2007; those would cost $9.34 now, if they’d been adjusted for inflation over the year, so there’s clearly a much higher mark-up.
I did a little further digging, and at least at Salt River Fields, it does not appear that prices have increased too much in recent years either. Two years ago, in 2024, the Arizona Republic compared spring training prices (archive link) then to 2022. Here’s the most relevant part:
On Friday, March 25, 2022, you could get a lawn ticket for $22 for a Diamondbacks game at Salt River Fields through Ticketmaster, the team’s official ticket site, before parking or fees. The total to get in for two people, including parking? $62… For the next Diamondbacks home game on Feb. 29, 2024, against the San Francisco Giants, lawn seating is now at $24 per ticket, before fees. After paying the fees and $15 for parking, two tickets for the game would cost $70.50 for two people, via Ticketmaster.
It’s worth noting the above may not quite be comparing like with like. 2022 was a Friday game vs. a Thursday one, and was also a game against the Angels, rather than the Giants. As we saw above, these factor can affect pricing. But let’s go with it. Looking at the tickets this Friday, I see lawn tickets at Salt River Fields for the game against the White Sox going for $25 through Ticketmaster, as show above. But there’s an important difference. That price now INCLUDES the fees. Therefore, two tickets, plus $15 for parking – with the caveat I don’t know if that’s still right – totals $65.
That is actually five bucks cheaper than when the Republic looked at the cost two years ago, and only about five percent up on the price from 2022. This is partly because the fees have dropped, now being a very reasonable two bucks per ticket, most unlike the usual gouging seen by Ticketbastard. But maybe that’s just a lawn special. What if you someone who would need a winch to get up from lying on the lawn, and you would prefer an actual seat. Does that decision change the math? Here’s what the Republic wrote in 2024:
The next cheapest seats for a game were $38 a ticket in 2022. After fees and parking, you were looking at about $96 for two tickets. If you want an actual seat, those run at $44 now, before fees. To get two tickets after fees and with $15 for parking, you would fork over $114.50.
I looked at the same game, and the cheapest seats – pretty much most of the upper deck – were $47. But again, that now includes the fees. Two tickets plus the fifteen dollars for parking, and you reach a total of $109. Once more, that’s about five bucks cheaper than in 2024, though represents a more significant hike over the price in 2022, about 13.5 percent up. All told, I would have to say ticket prices at Salt River Fields haven’t changed that much of late. However, they do vary. For the March 18 game against the Cubs, the cheapest seats are significantly more expensive, at $56 rather than $44.
But, as Joshua pointed out last week, getting in the door is only part of the cost. Food. Drink. Merchandise. And there is a nasty if anecdotal report that, if Salt River Fields are not gouging you on the tickets, they are certainly doing so on the merch.
I was not able to find documented proof of this – at least, not at the rate mentioned. It is true that the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community do apply a “Transaction Privilege Tax”, but it’s no more than 8.05%. I reached out to both Salt River Fields and the Cactus League to see if there was any truth to this report, but at the time of writing, have not heard back. I’ll update as appropriate. I did get apparent confirmation that the price quoted is real, though also heard it was a mis-mark, and rang up at a lower price. SnakePit fact checkers therefore rate this report “unproven.” The same hat retails on the New Era site, incidentally, for the positively bargain price (relatively) of $56, with free shipping.
Another common complaint is, “It’s cheaper in a lot of cases to see a Diamondback game.” Well, technically – but not so much, if you compare like with like. The first (non-Opening Day) weekday matinee at Chase is April 23rd against, coincidentally, the White Sox. $26.60 gets you in the door, but that’s on the third level, and oxygen is sold separately. A somewhat comparable seat to the cheapest at Salt River Fields, say in section 218-220, is $52.35, which is more expensive ($47). But you can get a lower level seat, behind the bullpen, for $35.85, and seats in 134-135 are also less than the $50 for equivalent seating at SRF.
Again, it varies dramatically depending on day of week and opponent. A Friday night game against the Mets, and those bullpen seats jump up $51.35. This is the cold hand of supply and demand economics at work, and will not be going away any time soon. If you want cheaper seats, you will need to be flexible as to your choice of opposition – which should be easy, since you’re there to see the D-backs, right? RIGHT? But also being flexible as to the day of the week, will also help significantly in getting more bang for your buck.
As you can tell, I kinda got diverted from my “Why spring training is dead to me” original intention. Maybe some other day.
