New York
CNN
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Tickets for this year’s highly anticipated World Series between the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers will be the most expensive ever.

According to reseller TickPick, the average ticket price on the secondary market hovers around $1,703. That’s narrowly better than the previous record holder in 2016 – and it’s more than double last year’s average.

Tickets for the 2023 Series, in which the Texas Rangers captured their first championship, average about $776 over five games, TickPick said. The previous most expensive World Series was in 2016 between the Chicago Cubs and Cleveland, when the average ticket cost $1,691.

This year’s Series kicks off this week with the first of at least four games on Friday in Los Angeles, where the cheapest ticket costs $975 on TickPick. The record highs are for game three, the first of the series to be played in New York: $1,476 for a standing-room-only ticket and $1,790 for a physical seat.

The sky-high ticket prices are likely the result of several factors. Both teams come from two of the largest cities in the US. Each film features some of baseball’s biggest stars, such as Shohei Ohtani of the Dodgers and Aaron Judge of the Yankees. It also marks the first time in more than four decades that the Yankees and Dodgers have met in the World Series since a 1981 matchup.

The Yankees have won the most World Series championships at 27 years, while the Dodgers won the World Series four years ago and have won a total of seven championships.

Ratings for the Fox broadcast network, which airs the World Series, are also likely to reach record levels for similar reasons: the teams are from the two largest TV markets and the teams’ respective playoffs have attracted huge viewership.

Fox Sports said Tuesday that ratings for its cable networks FS1 and Fox Deportes – plus its streaming platforms – were the highest since 2019, with an average of 5.6 million viewers for the six games of the NL Championship Series.

TBS, which like CNN is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, said ratings for the AL Championship Series between the Yankees and Cleveland Guardians also reached multi-year highs on its network. The games were also broadcast on truTV and streamed on Max.