Juan Soto’s record-shattering $765 million contract with the New York Mets shouldn’t cost the team’s fans a dime for a ticket at Citi Field.
But many fans weren’t ready to believe that Monday, when they learned of the record deal that shook the baseball landscape. They’ve watched as the prices of baseball tickets have basically doubled over the last two decades and as salaries soared to heights that were unimaginable when players like Soto were born. They believed those lucrative contracts are why it cost an average of $267 to take a family of four to a ballgame last year, according to Team Marketing Report, which tracks prices for tickets, concessions, souvenirs and parking.
“In my opinion, nobody should make that kind of money for playing baseball. I don’t care how good they are. No wonder ticket prices are so high,” one fan posted Monday on X.
“No human being is worth 1% of that. Good luck Mets fans! Those $500 upper deck seats are coming,” said another fan on Bluesky.
But economists who study the business of sports agree: ticket prices, and the other costs of being a fan, have very little to do with the amount a team spends on payroll or anything else. Ticket prices are driven by supply and demand — basic Economics 101 — not based on costs.
“Soto will have nothing to do with your high ticket prices, unless if he makes the Mets more competitive,” said Victor Matheson, a professor of economics at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts who specializes in the business of sports. “If that happens, it’d increase the price you pay because there’s more demand for a better product, not because they have to pay that amount of money.”
“If free agency did not exist and everyone was still getting paid pre-free agency salaries, the teams and owners would be charging the exact same amount for tickets, just be pocketing more money,” said Neil deMause, co-author of “Field of Schemes,” a book about the finances of sports.
DeMause published a study in 2006 as part of the book “Baseball Prospectus’ Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know About the Game Is Wrong,” which compared salaries to ticket prices and found no relation between salaries and ticket prices.
“In the early years of free agency, even as salaries soared, ticket prices remained largely flat into 1990s, relative to inflation,” he said. DeMause added that prices went up because of greater demand as well as limited supply to seats at newer, smaller parks.
“Ticket prices don’t go up when a team starts spending more money. Just like ticket prices don’t go down when teams are spending less,” he said.
He said even if the numbers have changed since his 2006 study, the economics have not.
There are two main examples of this: One is college sports, where schools don’t have to directly pay players but still see big financial returns through ticket sales. The other is the postseason, when players aren’t paid their normal salary and only get a percentage of ticket revenue as a per-player share. Yet those are the most expensive tickets of the season.
“Ticket prices don’t have anything to do with payroll. That’s not how it works,” deMause said. “You charge as much as you can get away with and what the market will bear.”
And one way to drive up ticket prices is by limiting the number of tickets available. Virtually every stadium built in recent decades, often with taxpayer support, had a smaller capacity than the stadium it replaced.
“The formula for the last quarter century is to create some scarcity,” said Vince Gennaro, associate dean of the Preston Robert Tisch Institute for Global Sport at New York University.
Teams also have found ways to maximize revenue from broadcast and streaming rights, concessions and sponsorships. Many teams now have tier pricing, charging more for tickets to the hotter games against more popular opponents, and selling some tickets in the secondary market to get an even better pricing. They also will sell some tickets at a discount when they’re about to go unused, offering sales to fans.
“Salaries are going up because teams have a lot more money to spend, and the return on investment for winning is so much greater,” said deMause.
And there has been more demand for going to games in person, despite the higher prices and fewer available seats.
In 1974, the year before free agency began, Major League Baseball teams drew an average of 1.3 million fans. Last year, they drew 2.4 million on average.
“You have lots of people who want to see the games but fewer seats to accommodate them,” said Bruce Johnson, professor of economics at Centre College in Kentucky. “The owners are able to charge the prices they charge not because they have to charge it to pay the players. They’re charging what they are because they can.”
