The Cleveland Indians return home to Progressive Field Monday night as the Tribe begins their final regular season home stand of the year with three games against the Minnesota Twins before closing the regular season out this weekend with the Chicago White Sox.
That the crowds should be large is a safe assumption based on the way the team's been playing and drawing, with the Tribe averaging 25,269 ticket sales a game. That's a 42 percent jump over their average just two years ago.
Their trip to the World Series last fall and the signing of Edwin Encarnacion two days before Christmas fueled season ticket sales early.
"We doubled our season ticket base going into 2017," said Curtis Danburg, Indians Senior Director of Communications. "So that was a great head start and where we're ending up is over 2 million [in annual attendance,] we haven't done that since 2008."
That's an additional 400,000+ fans over last year. If ticket prices averaged say $25, that would be an additional $10.2 million to the team in ticket sales and $816,000 in additional admission tax revenue.
The Indians have also sold out twelve games so far heading into the final week, something they haven't done since 2001 when their streak of 455 consecutive sellouts came to an end.
An added incentive to spur even more season tickets sales has been the pitch that the only way to guarantee access to post-season tickets was to buy a season ticket package.
"We've added almost a thousand season ticket holders for 2018 to get access to post season tickets in 2017," Danburg said.
But in the event that might get you thinking about going the same route, the deal's no longer available.
"We actually had to stop offering that payoff because we just don't have the inventory right now the way tickets are allocated."
Single game tickets for the American League Division Series starting next week will go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. at Indians.com. Because of the increase in season ticket holders, supply will be very limited.
If you'll be looking to pick up tickets in the secondary, market the Indians say the only way to get them is through StubHub.
"We have an exclusive partnership through StubHub that provides the fans the most secure way to get into Progressive Field."
"We're trying to limit the broker activity as much as we can, we've put in measures this year to curb that," Danburg said after they saw a lot of fraudulent tickets at the gates last year.
