CHICAGO — For diehard White Sox fans with time on their hands when the season kicks off in a few weeks, the team has a deal for you.
Fans who buy a Ballpark Pass get tickets to 28 games in April and May for just $149. That comes to $5.32 per game — including taxes and fees.
While the slate of games doesn’t include a May 15-17 series against the Cubs, it does feature tickets to the April 2 home opener vs. the World Series runners-up Toronto Blue Jays and to games against other 2025 playoff teams, including the Detroit Tigers and Seattle Mariners.
“If you come to all of them, it’s an unbelievable value,” Sox marketing chief Brooks Boyers said in an interview with The Score, a sports radio station, ahead of last season, when the Sox relaunched the pass after halting a variation of the promotion during the pandemic.
Indeed, tickets to this season’s home opener on MLB.com start at $34.85 for an upper-deck seat in the corner outfield. The Sox are selling 500-level tickets to some of the other games featured in the package for as low as $16.25, but the pass is still a bargain.
While the team says your seat location will vary from game to game, you could even end up sitting on the lower deck, fans who bought the pass last year said. And for some low-attendance games, the team has closed the upper deck — resulting in fans with those seats being allowed to move to the 100 level.
Fans won’t learn the location of their seat until 24 hours before first pitch. You aren’t allowed to resell the tickets, but you can transfer them to someone else.
Overall, the pass comes at a much cheaper average price tag than full-season ticket packages, which start at an average of twice the per-game cost for upper-deck seats and range up to $81 per game.
Fans watch as the Chicago White Sox played their last home game of the season on Sept. 26, 2024. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago
Of course, to take full advantage of the deal, you have to be dedicated — the White Sox are coming off their third 100-loss season in a row. In 2024, they lost 121 games, which set the Major League record for the most losses in a season since 1900. Some Las Vegas Sportsbooks are predicting the team will have the second-worst record in the league in 2026.
Not to mention the weather can be unpredictable at those early-season games — it was just 39 degrees on opening day in 2016, and it snowed at the game a couple years later. While temperatures have been more typically in the 40s and 50s for the opener over the past few decades, according to the Tribune, fans know it can still get pretty windy in the outfield bleachers or the sky-high upper deck.
Why offer such cheap seats?
“The Ballpark Pass [is] an accessible and affordable way for new fans to check out the White Sox game-day experience,” team spokeswoman Sheena Quinn said in an email. She said more than a quarter of those who bought the pass last season were new fans.
It’s no secret the team has struggled with attendance over the years. The Sox averaged about 16,700 tickets sold per game in March and April from 2013-2023 — excluding 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic — according to the Sports Business Journal. That was the sixth-lowest in the league during that span.
The team’s low attendance has been mocked for years.
“You will probably be sitting alone for many of those games,” one commenter said on Facebook.
Even the Wikipedia page chronicling last season took a jab at the team’s attendance: “The Chicago White Sox drew an average home attendance of 18,021, the 2nd-highest of all baseball teams from Illinois.” The Cubs are the only other MLB team in the state.
The Cubs do not offer a similar deal, although they have some promotions featuring last-minute tickets for college students and discounted tickets to weeknight games early and late in the season. Resale tickets to their home opener start at about $110 on Ticketmaster. Season tickets are sold out.
The deadline to buy the Sox’ Ballpark Pass is March 29.
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