Brewers Watch Party Tickets Sell Out in Minutes, Resale Prices Soar
Fans can now pay nearly $200 for the opportunity to watch a baseball game being played 1,248 miles away.
The Milwaukee Brewers won’t even be playing at American Family Field next week, but that didn’t stop fans from snapping up tickets to sit in the stadium and watch the World Series on a giant television screen.
Tickets for watch parties during Games 3 and 4 of the World Series sold out in less than 30 minutes Thursday morning.
The tickets, originally priced at $15 each, went on sale to the general public at 10 a.m. By 10:30 a.m., they were gone.
And now a resale market has emerged for the opportunity to watch a game being played 1,248 miles away in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Tickets in the 400 level of American Family Field were being offered on StubHub for $110 each for Game 3 on Monday, Oct. 26, and $188 for Game 4 on Tuesday, Oct. 27.
Those prices aren’t for the chance to see the Brewers play in person. They’re for the opportunity to sit in a stadium, look across an empty baseball field and watch a television broadcast of a game taking place at another stadium 1,248 miles away in Tampa Bay.
The action will be broadcast on American Family Field’s 12,077-square-foot center field scoreboard.
The ballpark has a capacity of 41,900, but the Brewers aren’t selling every seat. Not every section offers a view of the scoreboard. The team has not disclosed how many tickets were made available.
The watch parties were intended to provide an affordable alternative to attending a World Series game in person. At the original $15 price, the opportunity to watch the game with thousands of fellow fans in the stadium where the Brewers play was a relative bargain.
But the resale market has quickly turned the experience into something considerably more expensive.
Parking is an additional $10, meaning a fan purchasing a $199 resale ticket could pay more than $200 just to get into the stadium and watch a game on television.
The Brewers plan to open select concessions and merchandise stands for the events, with additional entertainment intended to replicate some of the atmosphere of a home game.
The watch parties are scheduled for Monday and Tuesday, when the Brewers will be on the road for Games 3 and 4.
The team will host the first two games of the World Series at American Family Field on Friday and Saturday.
Tickets for those games, where fans can actually watch the Brewers play baseball, are considerably more expensive.
As of Thursday, tickets on SeatGeek started at $2,359 for Friday’s opening game and $2,099 for Saturday’s Game 2.
The price disparity helps explain the enormous interest in the watch parties, even as resale prices for seats in a stadium without either team on the field approach $200.
The Brewers are appearing in the World Series for the first time since 1982, ending a 44-year drought.
If the series extends to a fifth game, the Brewers have said they will announce details of an additional watch party.
Games six and seven would be in Milwaukee on Oct. 30 and 31.
Several other watch parties are being held across Milwaukee, though none offer any semblance of the in-stadium experience.
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I think this could have been handled better by the Brewers. They could make the game non transferrable through the MLB app. It seems like amateur hour right now. First the timeless ticket snafu and now this nonsense.
I’m beyond disappointed in the Brewers and MLB for the way this was handled. It wasn’t 20 minutes. Watch party tickets sold out in less than 5 minutes. I was online at 10:03. I had 6 in my cart. Before I could hit the purchase button, they were gone. I was going to take family and friends, NOT sell them for profit. This was ridiculously handled and a disgusting display of humanity.
For me, I’m staying home with friends, neighbors and family with some chili, a clean bathroom, and real fans who are kind and who realize money doesn’t buy happiness. People should stop whining about the cost of gas and groceries if they are willing to pay thousands of dollars for at home game seats, and hundreds of dollars for watch party seats from scalpers.
I am still rooting for the Brewers but all this, would you call it preditory capitalism?, leaves a pretty bad taste in your mouth because it doesn’t have to be this way. And on top of it we subsidize the franchise in a inverse socialism for the rich scheme. (I’m sure Bruce Murphy has written about this, all total it might tally over $1B to subsidize build and improvements to the stadium. But for some reason we have no ownership stake in it despite footing the bill. We just have our sense of community exploited for profit).
The Journal referenced an article in 1982 “Is Baseball No Longer A Bargain?” by Mike Kupper. It outlined prices in 1982. Most importantly a beer cost $1.60 in 1982. In 2026 it costs over $13. (If you adjusted for inflation the beer should only cost $5.50).
Tickets cost between $8 and $18 for the 1982 World Series. I have no idea what the secondary market was like then but certainly nothing like it is today. Parking was $3 in 1982. Preferred parking today is over $120. Freakin nuts.