All-Star Game tickets among highest-priced in recent years

CINCINNATI (AP) – Dire weather forecasts hanging over the All-Star Game helped drive down costs, yet left the Cincinnati game with among the highest priced tickets for baseball’s midsummer game in recent years.

Austin, Texas-based TicketCity reported a final median sale price of $467, tumbling from $536 last weekend. The online service’s figures show that was higher than $449 for the game at New York’s Citi Field in 2013, and the $410 median price for last year’s game in Minnesota.

Spokeswoman Ashley Kubiszyn said storm forecasts likely scared away would-be buyers in the last days. But she said Cincinnati’s central location and attractive riverside Great American Ball Park, hosting the game for the first time, helped keep demand higher than usual.

The New York-based online ticket marketplace SeatGeek reported that the average resale ticket price was $609, dropping from $669 just two days before the Tuesday night game. That final average was below SeatGeek’s average resale price of $643 for the 2013 game in New York, with the Minnesota game last year showing an average resale of $548.

Ticket brokers and street scalpers were clearing their inventories in the last hours before the game. SeatGeek analyst Chris Leyden said game-day resale prices dropped to $424 in Cincinnati.

Leyden said SeatGeek estimates that nearly $6 million was spent overall on the resale ticket market for the All-Star Game, Monday night’s Home Run Derby, and Sunday’s Futures Game and celebrity softball game.

A total 43,656 spectators packed the stadium for Tuesday night’s game.