NEWSLETTER
If you wanted a bellwether on how desirable the rooftop tickets around Wrigley Field are going to be this year, we have one data point now, and it suggests “decent.”
The first of the rooftops put their tickets on sale this morning, and it appears that in under an hour, the July 24 season opener was sold out at $350 a pop (actually, as I type, the Friday, August 21 game against the White Sox just sold out, too):
#Cubs rooftop tickets at Wrigley View Rooftops on Waveland already sold out for the season opener Friday, July 24 & the Cubs-White Sox game Friday, Aug. 21.
The 11 Ricketts-owned rooftops on https://t.co/L7SQx4uXnu have not yet listed prices or made tickets available. @WGNNews https://t.co/9zcM0nTjLv
— Josh Frydman (@Josh_Frydman) July 8, 2020
To be sure, that doesn’t mean EVERY game or EVERY rooftop is going to see that same level of demand, but if you thought there would be extreme caution out of the gate for the limited capacity rooftop tickets, that doesn’t appear to be the case.
We’ll see what happens when the Ricketts-owned rooftops open up for sales, and how they’ll be priced. This is probably providing an early data point for them.
The rooftops average about 200 seats and reportedly can open at 25% capacity. So, let’s do some math just for the heckuvit on a game like this: 50 seats x $350 = $17,500 in revenue for a game at this price point, if it sells out. That does not include costs (the rooftops come with food and drink), which are no doubt substantial.
But, again, just for the heckuvit, what if you could max out attendance at 25% capacity on those 11 rooftops, and max out your price point? Well, you’d be talking about $192,500 in revenue per home date, and $5,775,000 in revenue over 30 home dates. Consider that a for-what-it’s-worth on the absolute, super-duper-maximum that the Ricketts could bring in this year from the rooftops. I suspect they will not all sell out every date, and also suspect that $350 a pop is not going to play over the course of the entire schedule, especially if Wrigley Field, itself, is ever permitted to have some attendance.
Anyway, there’s no hard news here, so please don’t take this as that. Just offering up this very early, singular data point.
