Blue Jays fans get creative

In case you didn't hear, the Toronto Blue Jays are in the Major League Baseball's World Series for the first time since 1993, first game tonight at the Rogers Centre against the Los Angeles Dodgers. It's big deal here - and even throughout the rest of Canada - and thousands of closet Jays fans (including me) have suddenly come out.

Thing is, it's such a big deal that ticket prices for home games have gone through the (retractible) roof. Initial ticket offerings sold out within hours. There have been the usual stories of touts and scammers buying up the much sought-after tickets online and immediately re-selling them at three or four times the price. There have been stories of real fans trying to buy tickets and being booted out at the payment stage under suspicion of being an automated bot (because, yes, that's a thing too, these days).

Resale tickets are going for up to $10,000, even $15,000 a piece. One lower bowl seat was being offered at $32,609. The very cheapest seats are currently selling for about $1,300 on StubHub. Toronto Mayor - oops, sorry, Ontario premier Doug Ford - has been musing about bringing in laws to limit the resale price of tickets by scalpers and gougers for events like these, but that won't help people this week, and once the event is over Ford will probably conveniently forget about all his righteous outrage (remember, he very scrapped a very similar law proposed by the Liberals when he first took office in 2019).

But some people are getting creative about getting hold of the golden tickets.

Flights to LA from Toronto are currently around $400, and you can probably find accommodation there for less than the $280 average hotel price. Given that the cheapest seats to the LA games are much cheaper (around $860), Dodgers fans being much more used to World Series appearances, you could see a game in California for around the same price you can in Toronto, which is kind of ridiculous. Of course, you also run the risk of being finger-printed, arrested, deported, and God knows that else...

Rooms in the Toronto Marriott City Centre Hotel with rooms overlooking the field of play are expensive, at around $4,000 a night (and up), but they can accommodate up to 5 people, so individuals could only pay $800 (and up) each. I doubt those are still available though.

Some people have started up GoFundMe campaigns to accumulate the cash needed for a ticket from generous souls who may or may not know them, one or two dollars at a time, and some of those have well surpassed their goals.

Then, there is something called "district drops", good tickets offered at preferential prices to those subscribing to a Blue Jays promotional text subscription scheme.

And finally, you could just trust to luck and hope for last minute price drops - and I mean VERY last minute - through Ticketmaster, as they look to unload unsold tickets. But given everything else that is going on, and the general baseball hysteria in the city, I really wouldn't rely on that.

I only hope all these people are not disappointed.