My Experience as a Cubs Season Ticket Holder
Last February I wrote about my decision to become a Chicago Cubs season ticket holder. It wasn’t an easy decision to jump on, after all, this was a large investment that I knew I wouldn’t get the monetary value back in return. I did know that I would fulfill my lifelong dream of being a season ticket holder, I would be able to pass along an incredible experience to my kids, and it would give me a fun outlet to meet others and expand my fandom. I thought it would be important to follow up my previous article because I know over the next 4-5 months the Cubs will reach out to new prospective Cubs fans for 2023 season tickets. So, I thought I would provide my feedback on how things went, perks you might not know you get, and if being a season ticket holder is worth your while. So, here’s my experience as a Cubs season ticket holder.
First, being a Cubs season ticket holder (STH) isn’t for everyone. Even some of the most diehard fans will scoff at the prospect of owning tickets to all 81-home games. I understand it, you absolutely pay a premium for the tickets. I bet if I purchased two tickets for every game on StubHub (which I’ll add some content on StubHub a bit later) I could have saved roughly 25% on what I purchased my tickets for. I know some fans (looking at you Danny Rockett) that probably spent half what I did to attend something like 70 or more games this summer.
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What seats did I have as a Cubs season ticket holder?
So, I’m not rich and it does seem like more recent months we are squeezing the last few dimes together to pay the bills. Knowing this, I was shopping at the bottom range of the Cubs season ticket holder packages. That really meant I was looking in the Outfield Reserved Terrace, Terrace Reserved Outfield Corner, Upper Reserved Outfield, and the Bleachers. I needed at least two tickets, so that was stretching the budget more thin when looking at where I would sit in the summer of 2022.
I also had some other issues to consider; I needed partners to come in with me on tickets. Partners that would grab anywhere between 15 and 25 games to help lighten the load. When I had potential partners, I had to take into account where they wanted to sit and would be willing to contribute to the cause. Lastly, I knew I would make it out to 20-25 games, they would take roughly 25 games, that left me with 31 games I would need to sell – so which seats had the best chance to resell.
Luckily, when you go through this process you have a ticket sales rep with the Cubs you can bounce questions off of. He actually helped direct me to the bleachers because they have a higher resell value online and more demand compared to the other seats I looked at. So, for 2022 I chose two bleacher seats.
Perks of being a Cubs Season Ticket Holder
When you buy season tickets, the perks don’t stop there. When the Cubs have concerts, you get a presale opportunity. The Cubs Convention tickets went on-sale to Cubs STH before general public. The perks don’t stop there though. One of the best perks – your season ticket rep! Our rep was incredible all season, which I will get more into later.
Cubs Season Ticket Holder Rookie Day
Early in the season the Cubs invite all new STH to Wrigley for dinner and free rein of Wrigley Field. You walk on the field, check out all the club rooms, get to sit in the dugout, even tour the press box, see the World Series Trophy and take pictures with it. There are Cubs greats there to sign autographs, you get a chance to meet your rep, have a free dinner on the Cubs (don’t get excited, its a hot dog), and just have a great time out on Wrigley Field!
Here are some of my favorite pictures from that event.
There are other events that happen throughout the year too. There was a Chicago Chef’s event, where you had a 12-course meal on the Wrigley outfield, and there was Family Day at the end of the season which was a similar event as Rookie Day, except they added in some games. (I couldn’t attend, so I had my brother and dad take my two kids).
Another great perk is the in-season offerings that you get. Not only do you get random discounts on items in the Cubs gift shops within Wrigley, but you also get discounts on food and drink (non-alcoholic) which absolutely help when you attend several games throughout the year. It isn’t an insane discount, but I’m telling you, when a hot dog is $9.50 and your youngest needs two each game he goes to, the discount helps.
A huge tip I would give any new Cubs Season Ticket Holder is, keep in contact with your rep. They are there to make the season and experience a great one for you. Our first visit of the year there were issues in communicating between the Ballpark App and the concession stands, so we ordered like $50 in food and another $30 in beer that didn’t get sent to a stand. We waited until the next day, as the concessions workers suggested, and saw we were charged. I simple email to our rep and within 15-minutes those charges were reversed for us!
But, our rep was incredible for providing extra perks as well. She upgraded my tickets when my son’s girlfriend was in town, so they sat a row away from the field and he got to entertain his girlfriend for the day. Amazingly, we also got to use our bleacher seats, so my wife and I sat in the bleachers with one eye on the love birds and the other on the game being played. She would upgrade our seats another day and added two more for us along with a chance to meet with Justin Steele before a game. You can’t get that on StubHub.
One last perk, you are invited into a Cubs Season Ticket Holder Facebook Group. While it was more of a networking page for me personally, others use the page to find extra tickets, find others that sit near them (which you can then try and find days you can share tickets), and discuss all things Cubs. More recently, the page is filled with other STHs looking for others to partner for the upcoming season. Which, if you are already a STH and considering dropping down to a smaller package or maybe looking to join someone else with a full season package, this is a perfect place as you all already understand the nuances of being a Cubs season ticket holder.
Selling your extras
So, you will hear becoming a Cubs season ticket holder is an investment. This “investment” isn’t one that pays you back monetarily, this one pays you back emotionally through the experience. It is difficult to get you money back on seats, and the only real opportunity you have at selling for a profit (if you do incline) is before the season starts through Facebook. There are tons of STH groups which you can sell the tickets, safely. All members of these groups are vetted out, from the ticket owners to the potential buyers. When I sold tickets before the season started I was able to do mark-ups between five-and-10%.
Problem is, once the season starts you are selling against everyone and their mother trying to dump tickets, so the prices drop fast. From a seller’s perspective, it would do us well to price fix a low mark on all games, but from a buyer’s experience they basically get the pick of the litter. End of the day, any way you can sell or transfer tickets, the better for you. I felt much better giving tickets away than sitting on them.
Now, onto StubHub…
I hate working with StubHub!!!
It is the worst platform and it gets you coming and going, literally. As a seller, not only are we putting tickets out there at a market price which is already saturated, but we are then paying fees to StubHub ontop of it. So, if I have “Bronze Level” tickets that are $17 each and after tax cost me $38 (for the pair and after tax, yes, there’s taxes) and I list them for $17 ea. I will likely get roughly $24 for the sale (estimates) after their $6 fee per ticket. The kicker, whoever buys those tickets are also getting hit with a fee, so the only one that “makes money” with StubHub sales is, StubHub.
Now, like I mentioned, you aren’t going to make money as a STH and you probably shouldn’t go into this with that in mind. But it is disheartening when you realistically have to sell that $17 ticket at $12 and StubHub still takes their cut.
What was worse, StubHub changed their platform in July of this year, which caused a ton of issues with the platform, it changed how you were able to post, sell, and even buy tickets. An example, you used to be able to lock in as a frequent setting to sell all tickets together (essentially not allowing you to sell one ticket out of a pair). You would be able to toggle this with each listing, but when you did a listing in a hurry or just simply forgot, it caused issues. They also got rid of, then added, then got rid of the ability to see what others were selling similar seats for. It was a nice feature to click a link and they would show you what others were selling the tickets for, which was phenomenal as a bleacher ticket holder. But, when that feature went away you had to work through multiple browsers and you would still have issues in pricing.
Now, the nice thing is, the webpage and app have a passthrough to StubHub built in. So it made listing tickets a breeze and even in those rare occasions where you forgot to list a ticket and tried doing it 15-minutes before a game – you were able to do so quickly. And yes, I did that and the tickets sold for almost advertised price 15-minutes before game time.
One thing to note with StubHub, which I didn’t realize beforehand, if you sell more than $600 in a calendar year with StubHub you have to fill out a tax form. It makes sense if you think about it, but that was a scary morning when I wasn’t able to list the tickets because StubHub needed my tax information (they supply all the forms).
Ultimately, StubHub is your easiest way to guarantee you will sell extras. I listed 20 games on StubHub in 2022 and was able to sell 19 of those games.
Friends made
When you go to games throughout the year, you recognize all the faces. There’s Mai Tai Guy that sits 15 seats to my left, Bleacher Jeff sits 6 seats to my right. There’s all the regulars that help each other save seats, and you learn that everyone is so very welcoming – especially when you don’t kill the vibe.
You learn which concession stand is the quickest, and you don’t really let others know. You know that you can leave your glove or whatever you bought in concessions cause the other regulars keep an eye out for each other. I went to a Cubs vs Cardinals double-header by myself, but I had never been to a game with more friends that day. I started every game taking a picture of Ian Happ’s backside and tweeting it to Jess. I took a video of a storm coming in and was played on 12 different news stations. There was no other experience than what I had in 2022 sitting in the left field bleachers.
My Costs and Sales
In 2022, I paid $3,399 per seat coming out to a pretax cost of $6,798. There is a 12% amusement tax in Chicago, so the grand total was $7,613.76. My partners chipped in $2,500, bringing my preseason balance to $5,113.76. I was able to sell $1,200 on Facebook, $1,000 on StubHub, and sold another $700 to friends and others. I gave away roughly $400 in tickets, leaving me with roughly $1,800 in tickets that my family enjoyed.
We also found out that it was probably better to drive to the ballpark. We live in the far north suburbs and it had always been better to take the train in. But, the Metra’s ticket prices have increased and then you need to either CTA or more likely Uber to Wrigley. In about 90% of the instances, you Uber’d to Wrigley. This added roughly $45-50 in travel charges.
Early on in the season I found a guy that is two blocks from Wrigley (a block and a half behind Murphy’s) and had spots for $30/game. I used him for 22 of the games I attended in 2022, so that was another $660. Let’s not get crazy and add Cubs merchandise and concessions, but to have season tickets in 2022 it probably came in around $3,000 in final costs when things were all said and done.
Renewals
So, I didn’t have to “buy” my tickets until like the second week of February for the 2022 season. I was only given like three weeks between my deposit and purchasing, but the Cubs had reached out to me in December and I had access to the STH portal by the end of December. So I had an idea of what I was doing and getting myself (and others) into.
While I again know what I’m getting myself into, the Cubs require a deposit for returning STH by November 16th. The full balance isn’t due until January 18th, 2023. You need to understand a few things here:
- Deposits are non-refundable, so if you are doing it, you better do it
- If you miss a deadline, you’re out!
The deposit is 20% of the season ticket package, and this season there was a discount of $480 from last year’s total (not really a discount, but the games are priced to provide a smaller total). My deposit is $1,500 and the remaining balance would be $5,700. I can pay the full amount by Nov 16th or I can pay the $1,500 deposit.
Was it all worth it?
Absolutely. Every game was worth going to. Every person we met, from the guy that gave us hand warmers in April, to Bleacher Jeff having my son beat the Marquee sign, to the little Cardinals fan that drew Pujols’ number and name on the back of his shirt – every moment was worth it.
Would I do it again? HELL YEAH!!! I have already put down my deposit on my 2023 season ticket package and we have a meeting planned on Monday to divvy out the tickets for the 2023 season. I’ve already done my deposit and cannot wait to be sitting in left field, some Goose Island beer in hand, hopefully singing “Go Cubs Go” after Carlos Correa hit a walk-off homer for the Cubs!
