Phillies fans have been almost universally pleased with the team finally signing megastar Bryce Harper for the next 13 years. Harper’s extremely good at baseball, he’s still young, and he represents a brand new era for the city’s baseball team.
The one drawback, though, is Phillies fans are going to start ponying up a lot more money if they want to see their favorite team in person, especially on the secondary market.
Opening Day tickets more than doubled overnight when the Harper signing became unofficially official on Thursday, according to data from SeatGeek. The “get-in” price, which looks at the cheapest ticket available, for Opening Day spiked from $61 on Thursday morning to $124(!!!) on Friday morning.
The Phillies are turning into a destination team for road games, too: SeatGeek said the Phillies were ranked the 26th most-in-demand ticket on the road before the Harper signing. After the news, they jumped to 18th most-in-demand — and that could keep climbing if Harper hits a few dingers in spring training.
This all comes after the Phillies said on Friday that the team sold 100,000 tickets in the 24 hours after the Harper news broke, which is bananas.
It sure seems like baseball’s officially back in Philadelphia.