By Adam Allington / St. Louis Public Radio
ST. LOUIS – The St. Louis Cardinals are changing the way they price tickets for the upcoming season.
Starting next spring, ticket prices will vary according to demand, including factors like weather, pitching match-up or day of the week.
Joe Strohm, the Cardinals' Vice President of Ticket Sales, pointed to a late-season series against the Cubs as an example of a situation where fans would benefit under the new system.
"Normally, 9 months out you sit and look and say that would be a very popular series," Strohm said, "Well, as we got closer to the series the interest in the series changed a little bit, because, for the first time in 10 years neither the Cardinals nor the Cubs were in the pennant race."
Strohm claims that floating ticket prices will allow more fans to come to games, with some tickets going for as little as five dollars.
Under the new system, so-called "value-based" pricing, the Cardinals could charge more for a marquee match-up like Tim Lincecum versus Adam Wainright. Though, according to Strohm, most of the tickets, about 70 percent, should end up going for less.
"When you look at the old system, you would have a Tuesday night game in a lot of instances priced the same as a Thursday night game or a Sunday game, and those two games a lot of times aren't of equal value," Strohm said.
The new structure only affects the sale of tickets to individual games and does not affect the price of season tickets. The San Francisco Giants are the only other Major League team to use value-based pricing.