Royals enjoy good fortune, which is what it might cost for a playoff ticket

Time was you couldn’t give tickets away to Royals home games. Now they’re the hottest in baseball.

No other team in the playoffs this year has seen ticket prices bid as high as they have been for scheduled or potential games at Kauffman Stadium this postseason.

Standing-room-only tickets for Sunday’s Game 3 of the divisional playoffs were going for $200-plus on ticket-resale sites like StubHub as of Thursday and trending up.

That’s five times more than what St. Louis fans were paying for the similar privilege to stand and watch the Cardinals play the Dodgers at Busch Stadium on Monday.

Want to actually find a seat for Sunday’s matchup at The K? As of Thursday, tickets started in the low $200s for the upper reaches of the upper deck and rocketed skyward from there: More than $300 for dugout plaza, more than $500 for Sonic slam seats in the outfield and $1,100 for table seats at the Diamond Club behind home plate.

“It’s crazy,” said Royals fan Drew Zimmerman, 28, who figures he’ll end up paying twice as much for a ticket to the game as he will for discounted airfare from Seattle and a rental car. “But I got a good deal on the plane ticket, so I might as well splurge on the seat.”

With an average purchase price of $325 for all tickets sold on Wednesday and the likelihood that prices will go even higher, Game 3 is on pace to be the most expensive divisional playoff series in the five years since SeatGeek.com has been tracking the secondary ticket market.

No mystery here.

“The ‘why’ starts and ends with the almost 30-year playoff drought that has just ended,” SeatGeek analyst Connor Gregoire said. “That pent-up demand is boiling over, and it’s reflected in the ticket market.”

Thank our old friend, the law of supply and demand.

The seven other teams in the divisional playoffs have all been to the postseason in the past decade, most of them multiple times. And while the playoffs still energize the fan bases of those teams, the demand for playoff tickets simply isn’t what it was if your team is making its sixth trip to the divisional playoffs since 2004 (the Angels).

Because, hey, there’s always next year.

But when your team hasn’t seen a postseason game at home since Game 7 of the 1985 World Series, who knows whether “next year” will take another generation to arrive?

“Out here in L.A., you don’t have that heart that KC totally embodies,” said Kansas City native and current Los Angeles resident Tyler Goetz. “To most people out here, today is just another day.”

That was reflected in the price of tickets to Thursday’s game between the Royals and Angels at “The Big A” in Anaheim. The team was still selling them, limit of four, for as low as $50 several hours before game time.

Goetz, 27, wasn’t able to attend either of the Royals’ away games but was scrambling midweek to find affordable tickets for Sunday’s game. He just happens to be coming back to Kansas City for the weekend and was not about to miss out.

“Everybody wants to be there to possibly see history,” he said.

During the Royals’ last trip to the postseason in 1985, tickets were also a hot commodity. That despite the fact it was Kansas City’s second World Series appearance in five years and seventh trip to the playoffs since 1976.

That September, the front office announced a drawing for single-game tickets, before anyone knew whether the Royals would make the postseason.

Yes, it was that much of a routine back then.

Each fan could ask to buy two tickets to either the league championship series (there were no divisional playoffs back then) or the World Series. Playoff tickets were $20 for reserved seats and $15 standing room, which would be $43 and $32, respectively, in today’s inflation-adjusted dollars.

Series tickets were $30 for reserved seats ($64 in today’s dollars) and $20 for standing room.

By comparison, the Royals website lists $62 as the base price for tickets to Sunday’s game, rising to $450 for the BATS Crown Seats close to the field — not that those numbers mean anything.

“It’s pretty slim pickins right now,” said Royals ticket manager Steve Shiffman, who said it’s possible but unlikely that a few dozen tickets will become available to the general public before Sunday.

“Always keep your eyes open on our website,” he said.

Tickets at face value are scarce now because the Royals allowed their 10,000 season ticket holders to buy multiple strips getting them in to all 14 possible postseason games. Other fans lined up in September to buy as many as four tickets for the Wild Card game and division series. (Single-game tickets to league championship games will go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday.)

Those unable to get tickets through official channels can always turn to the secondary market.

Which was also a popular option in 1985, despite the fact that ticket scalping was illegal in Missouri at the time. This was in the days before the Internet. Out-of-state ticket brokers placed newspaper ads offering to mail playoff and World Series tickets to buyers for $100 and up.

Occasionally, undercover police arrested street vendors selling tickets above face value that year. But guys like Mark Manfield escaped the cops’ notice. His family scored a block of tickets from some insider that fall.

“I had people calling from all over once they found out I had tickets,” said Manfield, whose family owned a now long-gone downtown bar called The Auditorium. “I made myself a tidy little sum.”

Now 57, he lives in California near his son, the aforementioned Goetz.

Unfortunately, Manfield has no line on tickets this year and can’t help get Goetz a seat to Sunday’s game.

“But he’ll be fine,” Manfield said. “He’s pretty resourceful.”

This story was originally published October 2, 2014 at 6:47 PM with the headline "Royals enjoy good fortune, which is what it might cost for a playoff ticket."