Cubs season-ticket prices rise by average of 10.4 percent

Chicago Cubs fans partied all season and into October as their team won its first playoff games since 2003.

On Friday, they got the bill.

The price of a 2016 World Series run might be a $200 million deal for free agent David Price. But the price of making it to the 2015 National League Championship Series is an average 10.4 percent price increase for 2016 season tickets.

According to the formula from Team Marketing Report's proprietary Fan Cost Index and information provided by the Cubs, the average season ticket will be $49.75 in 2016. The average season ticket was a little less than $45 last season. If you throw in the club box infield and outfield sections, which are considered premium seating and excluded from the TMR survey, the average 2016 Cubs season ticket is $55.09.

What really matters is for the first time since 2010, the Ricketts family's first season as owner of the North Side baseball team, Cubs tickets were increased en masse.

But an increase was expected, given the team's wildly exciting, 97-win season in 2015, which ended with a four-game sweep by the New York Mets in the NLCS.

Given that the Cubs will be World Series favorites when single-game tickets go on sale, they should certainly return to drawing more than 3 million fans to Wrigley Field for the first time since 2011. With the season ticket price increase, even some basic cocktail napkin multiplication shows a nice profit bump for the Cubs in 2016, and that's before the beers are poured.

That means president of business operations Crane Kenney can fill up that wheelbarrow of cash he talks about and drop it off at Theo Epstein's office as free agency kicks off.

"Nobody likes increases but we're obviously trying to keep our plan of being competitive and having compelling baseball going," Cubs vice president of sales and partnerships Colin Faulkner said Friday. "We are still providing value for our season-ticket holders. We are mindful that we are generating resources to put toward our baseball operations."

From 2011 to '14, the Cubs mostly held season ticket prices flat, or in some case decreased them. Last season, they raised prices in the best seats in the lower bowl of Wrigley Field: the club box infield seats, field box infield seats and a new 2,484 "terrace preferred" section carved out of the terrace reserved section. That resulted in a 1.5 percent increase in the team's average ticket price.

For 2016, the Cubs are creating a similar new section, taking around 900 of the best seats in the terrace reserved outfield section and making a "terrace box corner" section. That affects about 350 season-ticket accounts, Faulkner said. The average terrace box corner ticket is $42.95, compared to $32.92 for terrace reserved outfield. Compared to last season, the terrace box corner season-ticket holder has a whopping 43.3 percent increase.

The biggest increase, dollar-wise, for the main seating bowl is in the best section of the park, the club box infield. Those seats are up $13.42 on average per game, or 12.8 percent, to $117.87. For marquee games, those tickets cost $162.40.

The most expensive ticket in the park is the front row dugout box ticket, which will run its deep-pocketed owner an average of $320.49 per game. There are fewer than 300 dugout box seats.

The cheapest seats in the park are in the upper deck reserved outfield section and are up $2.75 to $22.81, a 13.7 percent increase.

Bleacher seats are up $4.06 per game to $41.92. And in 2016, the bleachers will be open all season.

The Cubs drew 2,959,812 fans last season. That's an increase of 307,699 fans from the previous season, or almost 4,000 per game, despite having the bleachers closed for the beginning of the season as Wrigley Field's multiyear renovation began. The entire bleacher section, nearly 5,000 seats in full, wasn't fully operational until the second week of June.

No seating section will be affected by the renovation this coming season.

The 2015 attendance increase was a major upswing. Cubs attendance had gone down every season from 2009 to '13. In 2014, attendance went up a total of 9,431 seats.

Last offseason, before the Cubs signed Jon Lester or hired manager Joe Maddon, Faulkner said their season-ticket renewal percentage was already the highest it had been in years, in "the low 90s." Given the team's hopes for 2016, he's expecting that rate to be even higher this winter. Many season-ticket holders already put money toward their 2016 deposit with unused playoff tickets.

Faulkner said StubHub's internal numbers showed that Cubs playoff tickets sold for "three to four times" the face value for the four home playoff games. During the regular season, the secondary market showed a 20 percent price increase for tickets sold.

As they usually do, the Cubs used their analytics partner, Natural Selection, to rejigger their five-tier pricing structure. In 2016, the Cubs will have 14 "marquee" -- their highest-priced tier -- games, compared to nine last season. That means four fewer silver -- second-cheapest tier -- and one fewer bronze games.

In the bleachers, which are tiered separately, there will also be 14 marquee games, priced at $72.80, instead of nine, along with three more gold (second-highest price), six fewer silver and two fewer bronze games.

Faulkner, who was hired before the 2011 season, said for the first time he can remember, the Cubs have a marquee game in September, on Sept. 24 against the St. Louis Cardinals. Given that the Cubs expect to be competitive again in September, 10 of their 14 home games that month are in the top three pricing tiers.