Update 5/15/25: Tickets are now available for June and July games! Book them now, as the most in-demand games will be gone soon.
Remember — there are only 4 cardholder exclusive seats for each game. Many of the highly desirable games will go quickly and then the other tickets are a very poor value. This time around, they are particularly hard to find. You have to know what you’re looking for. See this example from Citi Field where tickets are listed as “$40” in a section where the adjacent sections are going for $100+ per ticket. When you click that section, you’ll see that these are Capital One Cardholder Exclusive tickets available for 5,000 miles each. For reference, all other seats in this section cost more than 20,000 miles per seat in the example below.
If you click on a section without Cardholder Exclusive tickets, it will say “Powered by VividSeats”. Those tickets are a bad value!
~~~Original Post follows~~~
One of the best uses of Capital One miles is Capital One Cardholder Exclusives Major League Baseball tickets. I put that in bold because only the cardholder exclusives are a good deal. There are only 4 Cardholder Exclusive seats for each Major League Baseball game, but those four seats are typically within 5-15 rows of the field in highly desirable sections (in many cases they are club level sections) and they only cost 5,000 miles or $40 in Capital One cash back per seat. This post explains what these are and where to find them. See this post for some examples from my experience at a New York Mets game and some reader input.
Note: Some readers have been a bit confused because Capital One sells cardholder exclusive tickets, which are a great deal and are what this post is mostly about, but when they don’t have the cardholder exclusive tickets available they also sell general secondhand market tickets (which are typically an awful deal). See the heading below “How to find the good Capital One cardholder exclusive tickets” for more.
The Deal
- Capital One Entertainment is offering cardholder exclusive tickets to baseball games in April and May, with four seats available at 5,000 miles per seat (in excellent locations) for most of the games I checked
- Direct link to Capital One Entertainment
Quick Thoughts
Capital One sells sporting event tickets through a partnership with VividSeats. Most tickets yield an awful value of 0.6c per mile. However, Capital One has 4 Cardholder Exclusive tickets to every game that are typically a great value. They also sell seats powered by VividSeats that are an awful value. See the next section of this post for how to tell the difference.
The first game I looked up in New York when these seats launched was about $200 a ticket in the cardholder exclusives section. These are seats that I wouldn’t otherwise consider buying, but at 5,000 miles a seat, I enjoyed the great view shown above (and the Delta Club, where concessions had much shorter lines. We even ran into Mr. Met in the club!).
Cardholder Exclusive Seats are located very close to the field, though it varies a bit from one park to another. For example, Philadelphia has seats 5 rows behind the visiting team’s dugout, which my sister-in-law loved for a Phillies/Mets game as she got to sit right behind her beloved Mets.
Again, Capital One has many publicly-available VividSeats options at poorer value — you’re looking for the cardholder exclusive seats.
There were no additional fees for any of the tickets I’ve bought (in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Kansas City) beyond the 10K miles for two tickets or 20K for four tickets, though some parks have a couple of dollars in tax that must be paid with your card.
The tickets at Citi Field (where the Mets play) are in the Delta Club section, so you get access to better concessions and the seats are more padded. That type of thing will vary by park.
Personally, I’m not a huge baseball fan, but I enjoy cool experiences and I wouldn’t be very likely to buy tickets so close to the field otherwise, so bought tickets again this time around because it’s a fun experience for a reasonable price.
How to find the good Capital One Cardholder Exclusive tickets
One key thing has changed: In the past, if the cardholder exclusive seats were available, you would only see 4 seats for sale. Now, the cardholder exclusives are mixed in among nosebleed seats that yield terrible value. For instance, see this example from a New York Mets game — you’ll find the cardholder exclusive seats, which are in the Delta Club 11 section right near the field, for 5,000 miles per seat listed alongside seats in the 400’s and 500’s sections. You’ll only get 0.6c per point in value toward seats, but Capital One has those Delta Club 11 seats listed at a value of $40 per seat, which is well below the going price for those seats!
You’ll kind of need to know what you’re looking for — 2 or 4 seats for 5,000 miles per seat that are close to the field. Note that these are initially available for every game, but there are only four seats for each game — expect most of the desirable games to get snatched up quickly. In most parks, the seats cost just the 5,000 miles each with no cash outlay at all (I’ve bought tickets for games at both Yankee Stadium and Citi Field in New York as well as tickets to games in Boston, Philadelphia, and Kansas City and only paid 5,000 miles each in those cases). Some parks seem to have a small fee of a couple of dollars, which I assume is some sort of local tax.
To find tickets, just log in to Capital One Experiences and you’ll find MLB Single Game Tickets under the cardholder exclusives.
This link should take you directly to MLB tickets.
As shown above, Capital One is now mixing the cardholder exclusive seats in with all of the VividSeats tickets. That makes it kind of a pain to find the good seats.
Here’s the simple way to tell the difference: check the sections right next to the field. You’re looking for one that has tickets “From $40” (typically seats in these sections go over over $100 per seat or in cities like New York they would be over $200 per seat). Those cardholder exclusive seats will cost 5,000 miles each and you can only buy in sets of 2 or 4. When you select those seats, you’ll see that they are clearly marked “Cardholder Exclusive Tickets by Capital One” as shown here:
If you select a set of tickets that says “Tickets Powered by VividSeats”, those are not the cardholder exclusives and are offered at poor value! See this example from the next section over from the one shown above — tickets start at $103 and are available for 13,000 miles and are “powered by VividSeats”. Those aren’t the exclusives.
The “value” appears to be the same because Capital One is saying that the cardholder exclusives are “worth” $40 each, but in reality seats in that section would likely sell for north of $100 per ticket just like the nearby sections — Capital One is simply listing a below-face-value price for their cardholder exclusive seats.
When you click through on those seats, you’ll see they are Capital One cardholder exclusives.
The cardholder exclusive tickets have no additional fees — they are 5K miles per ticket, period. I bought tickets to both a Yankees game and a Phillies game (against the Mets) and paid 10K for two tickets to each game.
Again, Capital One also lists tickets in many different sections, those are not cardholder exclusives but are rather a selection of seats powered by VividSeats. The non-exclusive VividSeats tickets are not a good deal. You’ll only get 0.8c per point toward those tickets and there are a lot of add-on fees during the checkout process. Seats shown here are not cardholder exclusives.
Kind of interesting and weird is that Capital One labels the good “exclusive” seats as though they cost $40 even though the exclusives are near the field in otherwise much more expensive sections. Don’t be confused by this — the cardholder exclusives are labeled as $40 tickets, but you can’t actually buy them for $40.
In fact, when you’ve got the cardholder exclusive tickets, you don’t even get the option to use money to buy the seats — you couldn’t buy them for $40 each if you wanted to, it’s 5K miles per ticket during checkout with no option to use fewer miles and no additional fees (and you must buy either 2 or 4 tickets). If you are seeing different numbers of miles or additional fees, you’re not looking at the cardholder exclusive seats.
Also of note is that if you pick a team that isn’t in your local area, you’ll have to type in the city where you want to see them in the “Near” box. For instance, since I’m in New York State, it searched for Chicago Cubs tickets in New York City. I had to type in Chicago, IL to see games at Wrigley Field.
I was really happy to see that Capital One isn’t tacking any fees on during the checkout process — it’s literally just 5,000 miles per ticket (you have to buy tickets in blocks of 2).
Overall, it’s great to see Capital One offer interesting exclusives to cardholders. While baseball isn’t necessarily a direct path to my heart, I could see tickets to certain sold-out events or in great locations like these baseball tickets being an exciting cardholder perk. I thought the Final Four tickets were a cool idea. Offering something similar for other major events could become both a great use of miles and a great perk of being a cardholder.
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Thanks for sharing. Want to go to Yankee stadium.
Nick, I heard your comment on the latest podcast. I really want to get my parents tickets for their anniversary coming up so in addition to obsessively checking I’m subscribing to comments. Good luck everyone!
Just found out I can’t go to a game happening in a couple weeks. Does anyone know if it’s possible to resell on stubhub, seat geek, etc? Seeing mixed results.
In my experience, it wasn’t possible to list them on those third party sites. However, I could transfer them to someone else. I ended up giving them to a friend for free in that case.
Hi Nick. Thanks for the reply. Yes, saw your comment but also saw another commenter say they were able to. Was hoping to get some other data points.
Do it, get banned from COE, and let us know
Less competition from you scalpers for the rest of us real fans
I don’t know anything about baseball but my husband is a big fan and he mentioned wanting to take our 16 year old to a Detroit Tigers home game. What can I subscribe to so that I know when the next game or block of games is going to be released? I read through the comments, and it seems like people are indicating seats are gone after they are released within about 40 minutes, but I don’t know what to subscribe to know that the game and tickets have been released. As soon as he told me he wanted to pay for tickets to a Detroit Tigers game this year, I remembered hearing your podcast episode about this and came to search you out – and found this recent post from a few weeks ago laying out all the details for how to find the tickets, so thank you for that! BUT, if you can also help me more I’d be ever so grateful!
hey i would say turn on email notifications for this blog. i would also keep an eye out for when tickets were posted for the previous year. i’m new to this blog and was checking everyday from the beginning of may to when they released since last year they dropped on May 10th. from my experience getting tickets you have to have a game in mind instead of looking for games when they drop. i had a weekend in mind to go to some dodgers games. i was lucky enough to check my email within 5 minutes of the notification saying tickets dropped. i had tickets in my cart and when i hit pay it already sold out but my brother was able to get tickets for it. i was able to get tickets for day before that game i wanted but it seems that dodgers games sell out within 10-20 minutes. if i had a few tips i would say know when the previous years set of tickets dropped (May 10 for June and July games) and keep checking here or your email for a post every few hours. also to have specific games in mind so you can choose them immediately. i had a 4th of july game so that was probably a hot purchase for a lot. also just keep notifications on for your email even though you may get notified 100 times when tickets drop. i remember seeing tickets way after they dropped at the beginning of the season but the June/July drop seemed to all go immediately.
So much whining in these comments.
Like any points redemption, YMMV if it makes sense for you.
And like any in-demand deal with limited quantities, it sells out fast.
Thanks, Nick for posting this. The reality is many of us wouldn’t have known without it. But that also means increased competition for tickets, so many will miss out. Just how it goes.
I love this blog, but I must be missing something. 5000 miles are worth about $75 to me. For Phillies and Orioles games (my teams) its often not difficult to find infield seats near the field for about or less than $75 the day before the game through TickPick, Gametime, etc.
Then I guess this deal wouldn’t be for you.
The tickets we got sell for about $300 on average. Very worth it for me.
Next Phillies home game is May 27 against the Braves. Not a Mets game, but still a fairly large market game between two good teams. Seats in Row 2 behind the Phillies dugout are listed at $66 each on Tickpick, with no additional fees. Those prices will probably continue to drop until the game. This Cap 1 promotion is not always the best deal
Buddy if you don’t think it’s a good deal then fine, don’t buy it. But that price you listed is a flat out lie (or if you’re given the benefit of the doubt it’s a unicorn).
For this game you mentioned the best price in section 131 or better is $95 and that’s 20+ rows back. You can get row 5 (same as the Cap1 tickets) for $125 and nothing closer is available. So for this random not yet summer Tuesday night game it’s 2.5 cpp. Getting high demand games can easily get 6+ cpp.
Sure there will be games that aren’t good value but in major markets you’re getting at least decent value with huge upside if you’re able to jump in early. I got a bobble head game and a fireworks game in Philly this year. I game 4 tickets to a playoff game last year. All were tremendous values.
Like any other redemption there’s a range of cpp values and also a range in how much someone personally values them. For me the value of being able to cheaply take my family to games 5 rows behind the dugout is worth even more than the incredible cpp. Again like many other points redemptions I’d never spend the cash needed to have such a great experience.
So again, feel free to not use your points for these tickets. But also feel free to just keep it to yourself without jumping in here with smug “ACKCHYUALY…” comments with made up prices.
I noticed that you’ve made some comments here that seem to be accusatory and biased imo.
Why don’t you do as you say and keep those to yourself? No? Ok, welcome to the internet: a place where everyone has an opinion.
Tim x 2. This is really only a good deal if you’re looking for Yankees/Dodgers tix in September/October – and for many, the hassle won’t be worth it
The Yankees at Mets game for July 4 is going for at least $895 face value per ticket behind the Mets dugout. I got tickets for 5k points each, that’s about 18 cpp value. My out of pocket cost is $50 each, or $75-$100 each if 1.5-2.0 average award cpp. So yeah, I think this worked out well.
As Nick said, the Capital One offer probably wouldn’t be for you.
Tampa Bay Rays in the summer, eh…tix are cheaper on ticketmaster (if you look at the points value)
Was tracking this very closely and got tickets to three games I was targeting (2 of them for lower-demand teams but 5 rows behind the plate!).
I’m only saying this to highlight that I know what I’m talking about before I make this comment:
The Twins didn’t release a single ticket to any of their June/July home games. That’s peculiar, yes?
I looked last night around 11pm eastern when I saw your update and couldn’t find Dodgers away tickets for the June games in my region. There’s nothing, even from Vivid Seats. Would you assume that they got snapped up immediately?
Oh they would have been well gone by that time. We republished at 5:47 p.m. Eastern. First comment came into this post indicating they were on sale at 5:08 p.m. Eastern. I’m sure Dodgers games were probably gone by 7:00 p.m. Eastern – the most desirable teams usually go within an hour. By 11:00 p.m., it’s just going to be the weaker teams left.
If I just counted correctly, the Dodgers have a total of 27 home games between June and July. Somebody who saw this early might have picked up a couple of games. Probably fewer than two dozen people will get Dodgers home games. That type of limited supply of anything in the world that is in any sort of demand is certainly not going to last multiple hours. I’m not kidding when I say that you need to be lucky enough to see it early and then run to your computer the moment these become available if you want the most desirable teams. In fact, I was literally on my way to the door to go get ice cream with my wife and kids having just uttered the words “Let’s go” when I saw the comment that tickets were available and we had to immediately put ice cream on hold so I could run back to the computer. And I couldn’t end up getting a game that would fit with our schedule, but I did still see some games available for some of the higher demand teams at about 5:30 p.m.
But yeah, there just aren’t that many of these available and as more people start looking for them, only the fastest among us will get them. I know some people assume it is bots buying the tickets, but I don’t even think that’s it. It’s just that there are millions of baseball fans and each team has like 27 home games during a 2-month stretch. That’s a lot of competition for tickets.
I would agree, I know that I was in the middle of a conference and as soon as I saw the first comment pop up in my email at 4:08 CT, I excused myself from the conversation and logged in to buy tix. I wanted Cubs/Sox on a Sat night, but could only get it for Friday. Still a great buy for a tough ticket in Chicago even with a weak Sox team. That was about 35 mins later, I would expect if it was really a bot, even those would have been gone…
I also realized how limited the options are. I went out to my friends that are big baseball fans and tried to find games that would work for us to use the Cap1 tickets to go to. Between our schedules, our kids schedules and the home/away schedules of the teams that we were interested in, I could only find this one weekend that worked. I’m even willing to fly out to see my team as these tix are usually behind the visitors dugouts and still no luck.
Same as travel deals, to get the best “value” gotta be flexible with dates and locations (and the quality of the team you want to see). I used these to buy tix for a Cubs game in April. It was 32 degree night game that was probably not 1/3 full. A guy came a sat down in seats next to me in the second inning…he was in town for work, had nothing to do and saw $15 dollar tix 5 rows back from the field and thought why not! Doing the math and realized that these were not the best use of miles, moreso as I couldn’t convince anyone to go with me, so it was 10k for what would have been $15 tix…
I was in a meeting until 515pm ET and didn’t check email or CapOne until 552pm… the only Dodgers tickets I saw left were for the June 5 day game versus the Mets. Talked about it with a friend (who accidentally nabbed some tickets versus the White Sox instead) and they were available until 633pm, if not 640pm (when I refreshed that tab), so Nick’s guess is real close.
But the tech bros didn’t want the Giants Hello Kitty jerseys, so all is well for me!
Good to go with these tickets once or twice for other ballparks you want to visit and get the experience, but for your/local-enough team(s) I think the math works out to just watching resellers on dates you can actually get everyone together to go.
I was at Giants vs. Braves today, btw. Kept the seats warm for you. Enjoy your game tomorrow 🙂
Says the guy who has the bots! please share if you have one, seriously.
Cap1 needs an early access program or limit games per account. You snooze, you lose…but some of us have lives to live and can’t check constantly.
I’m not the spokesperson for people with no lives, but as one of the founding members of the club, I think it’s only fair that we get to see a baseball game every once in a while.
Totally understand! I didn’t realize they went up at 5pm unfortunately. But I was looking for AWAY when they’re in the midwest so I was hopeful to grab them. Oh well…
I was the one that posted the first comment that June/July seats were available. Been watching the Cap1 site the whole week, it was dumb luck that the site had just loaded the tickets and I was able to score seats to 3 prime matchups that I had my eye on, including the July 4 Yanks/Mets matchup (sorry Nick!). I’m a big baseball fan so this worked out really well. I wouldn’t have been able to do this without the information shared here on FM and the Facebook group. Many thanks!
That went crazy fast. I was able to get Cubs/Sox, but for Friday, by the time I tried Sat night it was gone. I got the email at 4:08, got the confirmation email from Cap1 at 4:49, so max 40 mins before sold out….
One thing that was different this time around was that the reseller tickets disappeared from the June and July games several hours before the C1 tickets were loaded, so it was pretty obvious that they were going to drop today and there were probably a lot of people (like me) constantly refreshing during that period.
This is a great tip.
Noticed that too. There was about a 4 hour lag and the drop occurred later in the afternoon than past drops. When I saw that all tickets were pulled for June and July, I changed my plans for the afternoon as I was targeting a specific Cubs home game that I am traveling with my family of 4 to see. Worth the wait.
Brutal. I was tracking this every 20 minutes the past 2 days, thinking it would drop. Went into a one hour meeting, came out, and all the games I wanted were gone. I’ll get em next time!
Doubtful lol
I don’t know. I was able to get tickets to three Dodgers games on the previous drop.
I’ll be impressed if you can get Mets or Yankees. For Dodgers, I was even able to find the 20K playoff tickets.
Both Yankees and Mets games were available when I first noticed a reader comment saying games were available. I was specifically looking for the Subway Series during Fourth of July weekend and those were already gone, but other games were available at that time. Subscribing to comments here is the best way to get notified as soon as somebody notices they are available. Then you have to RUN to your keyboard.
Didn’t realize you could subscribe to comments. Great tip. Thanks Nick!
How do we subscribe to comments? I’ve also been checking multiple times a day for the past few days and just missed this. Trying to snag TB Rays at Boston and they are long gone.
Directly above the comments section there is a button that says “subscribe” with a little email icon. You can use it to subscribe to further comments. Do note that you’ll get an email every time someone comments, which will include times when people inevitably comment to ask, “Are we there yet???”, but if you keep an eye on your email you will likely find out when they become available and be able to snag a game or two.
Thanks guys! Just snagged 2 Braves tix for July 4th weekend. 5cpp value compared to tix in same row!
Dodgers tickets went fast but I did get four tickets for one game and I am happy with that!
Hardest award in the game. Change my mind.
Hardest was Spain with Chef Jose Andres, but it’s a one off “award” with only 8 tickets available, not repeating like this one.