Asking price for NLCS tickets at Wrigley Field averaging over $1,000

If you’re still hoping to land tickets when the Chicago Cubs host the New York Mets in the NLCS at Wrigley Field, you better be ready to pay up. According to Newsday, asking prices on the resale market are shattering records.

As of Friday late evening, the average for the three games scheduled at Wrigley Field was a little more than $1,000, with Game 5 averaging $1,223.134. The latter number more than doubles the average asking price for Game 1 at Citi Field, which came in at $598.01 on Friday afternoon.

[NLCS preview: Youth reigns as the Cubs and Mets prepare for battle]

According to TiqIQ.com, which monitors a number of secondary market sites, the average asking price for the four scheduled games at Citi Field was $831.28. The average for all seven games is $936.64, which is the highest TiqIQ has seen for any LCS.

You think baseball fans in these two major markets are hungry for a World Series team? These numbers prove it. And these are just the initial numbers. It’s expected that as the series continues and we move closer to a possible clincher, those average prices will increase as fans hope to be a part of history.

Chris Matcovich, a spokesman for TiqIQ, said: “Ticket prices for this year’s NLCS are the highest we have ever tracked, which does not come as a surprise. You have two postseason-starved fan bases looking at the opportunity at a first World Series berth in a while. We could easily see prices jump up even more depending on how the series plays out. Who and where a team can clinch will really play into the direction these prices move.”

(AP) To clinch at home, the Cubs would have to win the series in four or five games. Not impossible, but certainly difficult given the level of pitching they’ll be facing on the Mets side. If they could get in position to do that though, the asking price for a Game 4 or Game 5 ticket could be higher than a Kyle Schwarber home run ball.

Of course, there’s also a difference between asking prices and what’s actually being paid.

SeatGeek.com, another site that monitors secondary market availability, said prices actually paid — as opposed to asking prices — for the first two games in New York were averaging $350 as of Friday afternoon, with Games 3 and 4 in Chicago averaging $725.

Vivid Seats broke down the AL side of things, where the ticket price are not nearly as crazy, but stil costl a pretty penny.

Prices for the ALCS between the Toronto Blue Jays and Kansas City Royals come in much lower than that of the NLCS, with the Blue Jays owning a median price of $370 to the Royals’ $300. The Blue Jays are back in the ALCS for the first time since 1993, while this is the second consecutive trip for the Royals, who went on to come up just short in the 2014 Fall Classic. Prior to last season, KC hadn’t qualified for the postseason since 1985.

The takeaway: The bigger the market, the bigger the prices get. Of course, one could also say the longer the drought, the bigger the prices. That’s what makes those tickets to Wrigley Field the hottest we’ve seen in an MLB postseason.

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