Those fans quick off the mark to ticket sellers after Yankee captain Derek Jeter announced 2014 would be his last season, got a great deal. Slower ones will be paying hundreds of dollars to see one of the most respected players of the past two decades take the field at select games (if he doesn’t get injured).
Within two hours of Jeter's Facebook announcement, the average ticket price for the Yankees' last regular-season game—scheduled for Sept. 28 against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park—jumped more than 160 percent to $803.
Early Thursday morning, the average ticket price for the Yankees' final 2014 home game in New York, scheduled for Sept. 25 against the Baltimore Orioles, was listed at more than $1,200 on TiqIQ, an online ticket portal.
According to Chris Matcovich, vice president of data and communications at TiqIQ, the average ticket price for a Yankees' home game during the 2014 season increased to more than $217 from $206 within just a couple hours of the retirement news.
Matcovich said he has never seen a player in any sport single-handedly move a team's ticket prices as much as Jeter did on Wednesday.
According to TiqIQ, the average ticket price for Jeter's last regular-season home game has already reached more than 2½ times the peak average price for the final home game of all-star pitcher Mariano Rivera, who debuted with the Yankees in 1995, the same year as Jeter, and retired last year after 19 seasons with the team.