Chicago Cubs Fans Ready For Spring Training 2017

Chicago Cubs mania isn't even a little over, even though the win was last November. Now that Spring training is a week away, fans are getting re-excited for their favorite baseball team to be on the field again as reigning national champs.

This also means that the team’s spring training tickets are in very high demand.  Prices have exponentially increased from last year, especially on the secondary market. The five most expensive spring training games — covering both the Cactus and Grapefruit Leagues — are Cubs home games at Sloan Park in Mesa, Ariz. Overall, the Cubs are involved in nine of the ten most expensive spring games, with four of those games exceeding an average of $100 per ticket.

That includes a World Series rematch with the Cleveland Indians on March 24, which currently has an average price of $110

The Cubs-Indians World Series tickets were almost five times higher on average than the previous four World Series. But the difference is still notable given the small scale of spring training. For comparison, spring training tickets have averaged right around $60 around the league over the past four years.

This might be a little disheartening to rival White Sox fans who have this year’s lowest single game ticket average at $6. That gap in price and demand is was most likely produced by the Cubs historic season in 2016, in addition to the White Sox shipping away Chris Sale and Adam Eaton to begin their firesale.

Worth noting too, the Cubs were a massive draw in Arizona even before winning the World Series. Last spring, they set a Cactus League record by drawing 226,163 total fans to their spring home games. That’s an average of 15,078 fans per game, and chances are that will rise too as the Cubs embark on their championship tour.