The Stats Don't Lie: Interleague Play Still Popular

Baseball purists were outraged when Bud Selig and Major League Baseball introduced interleague play during the 1997 season. The casual fan however relished the opportunity to witness new and unfamiliar matchups. Interleague play also made possible head-to-head series between cross-town rivals in large cities, with series like Cubs vs. Sox, Dodgers vs. Angels, and Mets vs. Yankees drumming up excitement and increasing ticket sales league-wide.

Recently however, baseball experts have begun to speculate that the novelty of interleague match-ups has worn off, and fans are tiring of the spectacle. Said ESPN senior baseball writer Rob Neyer on ESPN Radio: “I just think it’s overdone. I would love to see interleague play be limited to maybe 6 games per season…i think nobody is excited about the Royals and the Rockies, or the Padres and the Mariners.”

However, with all due respect Mr. Neyer, empirical data proves otherwise. The best way to gauge fan excitement is through how much they are willing to pay for a ticket to an individual game, and despite your speculation to the contrary, fans actually are excited about seemingly uninteresting interleague matchups. Tickets for the Saturday game of the aforementioned Mariners-Padres series were trading at an average price of $71.29, almost ten dollars higher than that day’s lone National League matchup featuring the tied for first place St. Louis Cardinals, which are selling for $61.79.

Utilizing Seatgeek’s unique database of secondary market ticket transactions, we compared prices of June interleague matchups, to the prices of the National League game taking place on the same day, thereby eliminating the day of the week as a confounding variable. Our findings, based on millions of dollars worth of transactions, show that the average cost of a ticket for an interleague game in June is $101.51. This is almost double the NL average of $51.27. Additionally, the average price for a ticket to the most popular interleague game, the Friday June 18th clash between the Yankees and the Mets, was more than three times the cost of a ticket to the most popular National League game, the Wednesday, June 23rd match between the Astros and the Giants, at $209.10 to $62.59.

Almost all interleague games are trading at higher prices than their N.L counterparts. However certain series are more popular than others. The top 5 most in demand series are, unsurprisingly:

• Mets @ Yankees – Fri. June 18th – Avg. price – $209.10
• Dodgers @ Red Sox – Sat. June 19th – Avg. price – $201.41
• Yankees @ Dodgers Sat. June 26th- Avg. price – $189.20
• Phillies @ Red Sox – Sat. June 12th – Avg. price – $186.13
• Phillies @ Yankees – Thurs. June 17th – Avg. price – $160.15

For tickets and price forecasts to these games and more, don’t forget to visit seatgeek.com.

During his same interview on ESPN radio, Rob Neyer concluded: “The reason it is the way it is now, is because this is the way it was conceived by Bud Selig…16 years ago, and we’re stuck with him until he’s not commissioner anymore, but I guarantee you in five to ten years it won’t be like this.” Well in this instance we have to admit you’re right Rob. If these current ticket trends continue, in five to ten years we most likely will not have teams playing 18 interleague games a season. They’ll be playing many, many more.

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