Ticket prices for World Series opener in Kansas City are soaring

Tickets to the first game of the World Series in Kansas City have skyrocketed to record prices, with the average seat going for more than $1,000, behind-the-plate seats for more than $13,000 and standing-room-only tickets listed for more than $600, according to an analysis by SeatGeek.

Even in the last five years, as ticket prices for sporting events have multiplied in price, no opening game of the World Series has matched the demand of Kansas City, which last hosted one 29 years ago. The average resale price for a ticket is $1,048, according to SeatGeek, with the cheapest get-in price at $602 and rising.

“There just aren’t a lot of tickets on the market,” said Jeff Goodman, the president of Kansas City-based Goody Tickets. “We already sold two-thirds of what we own. That’s pretty quick. Some people are late and may hope the prices go down. You might find some people lucky here and there. But the demand is high enough that you’re not going to see a big drop. Somebody asked me today if they’re going to come down to $300 or $400, and I said no way.”

The previous high for a Game 1, according to SeatGeek, was 2010 in San Francisco: $888 a ticket. Even factoring in inflation, the tickets for Kauffman Stadium cost nearly $100 more apiece, leaving season-ticket holders who sprung for postseason strips and winners of a lottery held by the Royals as the luckiest people in the city.

Demand last year drove gameday prices for tickets to the sixth and clinching game of the World Series in Boston toward the $1,500 range, nearly twice the Game 1 price of $762. San Francisco in 2012 averaged $675 for the first game and St. Louis $495 the year before.

The best bet for some fans could be to make a road trip out of the series. The get-in price in San Francisco prior to the Giants winning the pennant was less than $550 a ticket, and 15th-row, box first-deck seats up the right-field line at AT&T Park could be had for $730. As of Friday morning, after the Giants clinched a berth in the World Series, standing-room-only tickets were going for $550.

Should the series extend to a sixth or seventh game, the prices for Game 1 could look like bargains. Already the average price for Game 6 is $1,168 and Game 7 is $1,272, according to SeatGeek. That’s double the price for Games 6 and 7 in St. Louis in 2011 and could place Kansas City in the same vicinity as Boston last year.

Among those seats for sale in Game 7 is a quartet in Row B of the Crown Club, the best seats in the house. Currently, a website called TicketCity.com is peddling those four tickets for the low, low price of $66,048 – or $16,512 a seat. That includes a $13,934 price for each ticket and $2,578 worth of service fees for each.

The good news? Those $16,000-plus tickets come with free FedEx shipping.