Chicago Cubs fans wanting season tickets no longer need to hold off until their name comes up on the waiting list.
The Cubs released season tickets to the public Monday, including a new 20-game plan with seats available in the field box outfield, upper box infield, upper box midfield and upper box outfield sections. Fans also can purchase a 40-game plan or full season tickets.
The Cubs created a waiting list for season tickets around 2003, and during the team’s peak seasons it could take a few years for fans to reach the top. The Cubs anticipate they will need the list again in the near future.
For now, though, anyone can buy season tickets while there is inventory this offseason.
“We do have a limited amount of season tickets still remaining,” Cale Vennum, senior vice president of Marquee 360, which oversees Cubs ticketing, told the Tribune. ”We’ve seen that growing back since COVID, as you’ve seen attendance increase each year since we returned to full capacity.
“So our belief is that prior to opening day, we probably will reach our full capacity and probably need to reinstitute a waiting list. But as of right now, fans can go and purchase immediately.”
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The Cubs have taken an aggressive approach to selling season tickets. They offered a deal in early September, when the team was in playoff position, in which fans placing a deposit on 2024 season tickets would get priority access to purchase tickets to 2023 postseason games.
Opening their remaining inventory — bleacher season tickets were already sold out before Monday — to the public represents another path. Vennum said those approaches are a continuation of a philosophy to create different products and offerings to fans.
“We’ve always had a really diversified set of tickets that tried to be responsive to our fans and meet them where they are,” Vennum said. ”This is really an extension of that and bringing that to the season ticket world, where we heard from our fans that there’s a lot of people that want 81 games. And candidly, from the sales that we’ve seen from the postseason deposit, almost two-thirds of those fans still chose a full season ticket.
“But there are a lot of people that said: ‘That’s too many games for me. I want to be a season ticket holder, I want to be part of the community, but 20 games would be more accessible with my schedule.’”
Despite the Cubs falling short of the postseason, their season ticket renewal rate was in the mid-90% range, Vennum said, with more than 1,700 new accounts for 2024 before Monday’s public sale.
The Cubs typically cap their season ticket base in the mid-20,000s. Vennum described it as a fluid process every year both for making single-game tickets available and “as the Major League Baseball requirements change.” He said the Cubs saw a bump in season ticket sales after Craig Counsell was introduced as their new manager last week.
“I think our fans are excited for the offseason and excited to see the team on opening day,” Vennum said.