Tigers’ Bidding: Auction for Baseball Tickets

I was listening to the Detroit Tigers game on my way home from work last night. Not only did the Tigers score 11 runs in one inning, but 19 in the game. During the game the announcers advertised that the Tigers were now selling tickets through an auction. Currently up for bid are the three upcoming home series against some of the AL greats (LA, New York, and Boston). So it looks like they are selling their good tickets to their good games.

I have often wondered why teams like New York or Boston who sell out every game do not do auctions, before their slow start the Tigers were expected to also sell out most of their games. From an economic point of few if people were going to resell the tickets on Ebay anyways, why not charge more for the tickets to begin with? Perhaps public relations is part of it, but I think the public getting used to varied prices more and auctions, and running auctions now has an extremely small cost.

I don’t think the Tigers are advertising enough though, as it appears they have received hardly any bids even on tickets that have auctions ending tonight.