For East LA native Steven Senko, nabbing a ticket to the World Series just made sense. He grew up playing baseball, starting with t-ball at 4 years old, and naturally became a fan of the New York Yankees. Senko, who played as a catcher, idolized World Series champ Jorge Posada. Plus, for the last five years, he hasn’t missed a game when the Yankees came to LA.
“I would tell people I've already mentally committed to paying whatever the price is for those tickets,” Senko tells KCRW.
His moment finally came during the ALCS and NLCS games — watching the Yankees face off against the Cleveland Guardians and the Dodgers play the New York Mets. Once the Dodgers prevailed, Senko pulled the trigger, buying two tickets in the reserve level, all for the low price of $3178.
“I purchased them. I did the whole thing. And once I saw that charge in my bank account and I saw that money leave, I got some good buyer's remorse, just because of how expensive they were.”
Those feelings quickly subsided, thanks in part to his fiancée. “She's a big Dodger fan. I'm a big Yankee fan. We had been talking about it all year, kind of in jest, and now that's actually a reality, it’s like … ‘Yeah, of course, we have to do this.’ There's no way that we weren't going to do this.”
The Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees face off for Game 1 of the 2024 World Series on Friday. The highly anticipated showdown between the East and West Coasts is also shaping up to be the priciest Fall Classic in Major League Baseball history. Much like Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, the price of resale tickets have ballooned. As of Thursday morning, prices for a single ticket at the 56,000-seat Dodger Stadium for Game 1 are running for as much as $20,710 on SeatGeek.
The hefty price tag, however, shouldn’t come as a surprise, says UCLA economics professor Lee Ohanian.
“It's really a unicorn World Series. It’s a possible once-in-a-lifetime event for baseball fans, because all the stars have lined up with this particular matchup. You've got the greatest rivalry in baseball between the Yankees and the Dodgers, and it also represents the East Coast and the West Coast — New York versus Los Angeles.”
He adds, “The Dodgers left New York many, many years ago. But despite that being ancient history, that still is a cry in the guts of many New York sports fans that has persisted over the years. It's been over 40 years since the Dodgers and the Yankees have met.”
Ohanian, who teaches sports economics, also says for those who can afford it, paying thousands of dollars for World Series tickets comes down to the experience.
“When is the next time that a baseball game might be of this much interest? Ohanian says. “You've got a lot of very wealthy people. They're very high-capacity spending people, and they spend a lot of their money on entertainment. So when something like this comes along, they're willing to say, ‘You know what, let's go ahead and take the splash. Let's go ahead and take the dive and do this, because there's nothing else we've ever done like this, and maybe there won't be anything else like this … in our lifetimes.’”
This year’s sky-high prices might also prove to be historic. So far, the outsized demand is similar to the 2016 World Series, when the Cubs won their first World Series title in more than a century, says Chris Leyden, director of growth management at SeatGeek.
This year marks the third World Series Daniel Lay will be attending. He snagged his tickets at the height of the NLCS when he thought it looked like the Dodgers could be going all the way. He snagged two Section 5 TD tickets for $2098. That same section, he says, now has tickets going for $3000 per seat on some secondary market sites.
Lay has zero regrets paying for his World Series tickets, even if they rival the price of his season tickets for the LA Chargers.
“That $2,000 is what I pay for going to 10 games at SoFi stadium, right? So, is it worth it? I can obviously make an argument that it's not. However, there are these moments that occur. We went to the Red Sox game — I think it was Game 4 at Dodger Stadium, and that was the historic game where Kobe [Bryant] was there. Yasiel Puig hits that home run. You see these iconic photos of Kobe in Dodgers gear, right? Throwing his hands up in the air. We lost that game, but there was that iconic moment, and that feeling that we had was just incredible. I've never had that feeling before.”
The last time the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees faced off at the World Series was in 1981. The Boys in Blue walked away with a 4-2 win in the best-of-seven series. In total, the two teams have faced off 12 times in the Fall Classic, dating back to 1941.