Tonight, the Toronto Blue Jays will begin a 3 game series at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia against the Phillies. However, this is no ordinary home series for the Phillies. Instead, this series was supposed to be played in Toronto but had to be moved to Philly due to security reasons that arose from the G20 Summit being held in Toronto this weekend.

As a result, the game will be played as if the Blue Jays are the home team; they will take batting practice first, they will pitch in the top of the inning and hit in the bottom half, and they will wear their home uniforms. Obviously though, the fans, which are big huge part of having “home field advantage,” are going to be overwhelmingly Phillies fans. The Blue Jays considered moving to a more neutral field but decided playing in Philly would be the easiest solution. According the the Blue Jays President and CEO Paul Beeston, the series was expected to draw around 90,000 fans for the 3 game-set before it was moved. The Blue Jays usually draw an average of 15,208 fans, so this series was supposed to be a big draw.

We at SeatGeek are always interested in if, and how, these abnormalities affect ticket prices. Apparently, the Phillies and Blue Jays will be sharing revenue for this game, with the goal for both teams to come out revenue neutral. We were curious to see if ticket prices for the series would be higher than the season average at home for the Phillies due to its uniqueness and how ticket prices for the series would compare to the season average in Toronto since this is technically a home game for Toronto.

• There is a slight, but insignificant, increase in average transaction price for this series over the Phillies season average, $61.73 to $59.62.
• The one game that is significantly higher than the Phillies season average is tonight’s game, selling at an average of $73.39. This is most likely due to the fact that Roy Halladay is pitching and facing his old team.
• The average transaction price for this series is significantly less than the Blue Jays average price at home.

The rarity of this kind of series seems to have had little effect on ticket prices, as the prices are right in line with the season average at home for the Phillies. This is definitely a unusual series and it will be interesting to watch how it goes. I wonder how many Blue Jays fans are coming down from Toronto to see their team play “at home?”

Be sure to follow us on Twitter @SeatGeekMLB and email max@seatgeek.com with any questions or comments.

Baseball purists were outraged when Bud Selig and Major League Baseball introduced interleague play during the 1997 season. The casual fan however relished the opportunity to witness new and unfamiliar matchups. Interleague play also made possible head-to-head series between cross-town rivals in large cities, with series like Cubs vs. Sox, Dodgers vs. Angels, and Mets vs. Yankees drumming up excitement and increasing ticket sales league-wide.

Recently however, baseball experts have begun to speculate that the novelty of interleague match-ups has worn off, and fans are tiring of the spectacle. Said ESPN senior baseball writer Rob Neyer on ESPN Radio: “I just think it’s overdone. I would love to see interleague play be limited to maybe 6 games per season…i think nobody is excited about the Royals and the Rockies, or the Padres and the Mariners.”

However, with all due respect Mr. Neyer, empirical data proves otherwise. The best way to gauge fan excitement is through how much they are willing to pay for a ticket to an individual game, and despite your speculation to the contrary, fans actually are excited about seemingly uninteresting interleague matchups. Tickets for the Saturday game of the aforementioned Mariners-Padres series were trading at an average price of $71.29, almost ten dollars higher than that day’s lone National League matchup featuring the tied for first place St. Louis Cardinals, which are selling for $61.79.

Utilizing Seatgeek’s unique database of secondary market ticket transactions, we compared prices of June interleague matchups, to the prices of the National League game taking place on the same day, thereby eliminating the day of the week as a confounding variable. Our findings, based on millions of dollars worth of transactions, show that the average cost of a ticket for an interleague game in June is $101.51. This is almost double the NL average of $51.27. Additionally, the average price for a ticket to the most popular interleague game, the Friday June 18th clash between the Yankees and the Mets, was more than three times the cost of a ticket to the most popular National League game, the Wednesday, June 23rd match between the Astros and the Giants, at $209.10 to $62.59.

Almost all interleague games are trading at higher prices than their N.L counterparts. However certain series are more popular than others. The top 5 most in demand series are, unsurprisingly:

• Mets @ Yankees – Fri. June 18th – Avg. price – $209.10
• Dodgers @ Red Sox – Sat. June 19th – Avg. price – $201.41
• Yankees @ Dodgers Sat. June 26th- Avg. price – $189.20
• Phillies @ Red Sox – Sat. June 12th – Avg. price – $186.13
• Phillies @ Yankees – Thurs. June 17th – Avg. price – $160.15

For tickets and price forecasts to these games and more, don’t forget to visit seatgeek.com.

Update: Interleague Play in Review 6/29/10

As the interleague matchups have drawn to a close for the 2010 season, we decided to take a retrospective look back at this year’s results, both on the field, and off. Once again the AL emerged from interleague play victorious, going 134-118, and winning the majority of contests for the seventh straight year. Teams such as the Boston Red Sox (13-5 in Interleague play) and Chicago White Sox (15-3) used their interleague supremacy to catapult themselves back into their respective divisional races, while the Texas Rangers solidified their lead in the AL West, by going 14-4 against National League opponents. Certain players embraced interleague play with open arms as well. Jake Peavy, who has struggled since his acquisition by the White Sox, posted a microscopic 0.78 ERA during this stretch, and Rangers’ outfielder Josh Hamilton hit .472 during interleague games.

While inevitably at this time of year baseball purists, writers, bloggers, and fans alike express their disdain for the “artificial” rivalries created by interleague games, as we previously proved, Interleague play sells! Now, as all regular season AL – NL matchups have concluded, we can reflect on just how well interleague play resounded with fans in 2010.

As it turns out, fans quite enjoy watching Interleague games, regardless of their “artificial” nature. As we have shown in a recent blog post, ticket sales are correlated to fan support. Major League Baseball announced yesterday that attendance for interleague games was up 17.8% over 2010 intraleague matchups, drawing an average attendence of 33,253 fans per game, compared to the intraleague average of only 28,233. Our friend Maury over at bizofbaseball.com recently released a comprehensive review of attendance at interleague games which I highly recommend. According to his analysis, the top interleague park in 2010 was Dodger Stadium, drawing an average attendance of 54,332 in 6 games against the Yankees and Angels.

We also decided to take a quick look at the top selling games during this time period. Between the dates of May 21st, the first day of Interleague play, and June 27th, the last, there were 512 MLB games, of which less than half, 252, were interleague, and 260 were intraleague. However, despite being the minority of contests, the top 10, and 14 of the top 15 highest priced games during this time period were of the interleague variety.

The top-selling game, perhaps unsurprisingly, was the Saturday May 22nd Subway Series clash between the Yankees and Mets at Citi Field. Rounding out the top 5 are more of the usual suspects when it comes to drawing high ticket prices, including the Dodgers, Red Sox, and Phillies in addition to the Yankees and Mets.

During his same interview on ESPN radio, Rob Neyer concluded: “The reason it is the way it is now, is because this is the way it was conceived by Bud Selig…16 years ago, and we’re stuck with him until he’s not commissioner anymore, but I guarantee you in five to ten years it won’t be like this.” Well in this instance we have to admit you’re right Rob. If these current ticket trends continue, in five to ten years we most likely will not have teams playing 18 interleague games a season. They’ll be playing many, many more.

You can listen to Neyer’s interview here.

For more data or to answer any questions or comments, email me at jonathan@seatgeek.com and follow on twitter @SeatGeekMLB

The Florida Marlins haven’t really been a franchise on the cutting edge, unless you define ‘cutting edge’ as dismantling World Series championship teams in record time, not fact-checking the relative Judaism of their first basemen, or having their mascot spray unsuspecting tourists with a water gun. However, today the Marlins have done something truly innovative. Thanks to their groundbreaking procedure of selling tickets to games that already happened, each purchaser is guaranteed a ticket to a historic event.

Florida Marlins management has decided to sell unused tickets from last Saturday’s game against the Phillies; the game in which Roy Halladay pitched a perfect game. This way, just like with Lebron James, “we are all witnesses.”

The Marlins drew a crowd of about 25,000 spectators for Saturday’s game, leaving tens of thousands of unsold tickets to be sold off as souvenirs. The Marlins will make the tickets available today, Tuesday June 1st, online, and at the box office in south Florida, and are being sold at face value. It is certainly an imaginative money-making scheme for the perennially cash-strapped franchise, and it will be interesting to see how well these ticket stubs sell, both from the Marlins themselves, and on the secondary market.

I guess if you can’t go back in time and actually attend the game, the Marlins are offering the next best thing. The beauty of sports is the ever-present possibility of history to be made. When you purchase a ticket to a sporting event you’re buying more than an afternoon or evening of entertainment, you are accepting an invitation to a world of infinite potential, where, as the N.B.A. has so frequently reminded us, “amazing happens.” When buying a ticket to Halladay’s perfect game, you’re buying a reminder of the excitement each game possesses, and of which you, despite your ticket stub, were not a part.

If you prefer purchasing tickets to games that haven’t already taken place, check out SeatGeek’s Marlins and Phillies pages for the best deals anywhere.