Update 2/29/24: As pointed out by Chris in the comments, April and May 2024 games are now available. I just now snagged tickets to an afternoon game on Memorial Day weekend. 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 carholder 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.
More detail within the republished post below.
Capital One Entertainment recently launched and I was lukewarm on it at launch, but if you are a baseball fan you have to check out the tickets they’ve loaded through the end of May. A reader alerted me to the fact that Capital One is selling cardholder exclusive tickets — in many cases fantastic seats near the field / in club level sections — for 5,000 miles per ticket. They appear to be offering 4 tickets per game on these and it is worth a look if you have Capital One miles and an affinity for baseball.
These tickets are a steal as the 5,000-mile seats are awesome in most parks when available. 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.
I checked a bunch of other teams and they had great seats in many cities for the same 5,000 miles per ticket for up to 4 tickets per game for all of the games loaded through the end of May (the last date I saw available for Mets tickets was June 1st). Again, Capital One has many publicly-available VividSeats options at poorer value — you’re looking for the cardholder exclusive seats.
I have now bought tickets to several games over the past couple of years at 5,000 miles each. The actual “cash value” of the seats depends on the team and game, but a couple of the games I attended had seats in the same section going for north of $200 a seat. I had tickets to a Baltimore Orioles game last year where they have a “crossover jersey” giveaway — it was Baltimore Orioles jerseys in Baltimore Ravens colors. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make that game and so I gave the seats to a friend, but I’d have enjoyed that giveaway! I checked out promo games in several cities. I might have gone for the hogwarts scarves giveaway game at Citi Field, but it’s a 4pm game on a Saturday in April — the weather and timing probably wouldn’t work out for us.
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.
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.
Right now, April and May 2024 games are available. Each of the past couple of years, Capital One has offered two months at a time and released games in batches. I assume June and July will get released in a month or two.
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
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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How many days in advance of the game are the tickets sent to you?
Yes I got the tickets for Petco. They said row I; section 110 which I thought was row 1. After a call from Capital One it turns out it is row 46. I complained but they didn’t seem to care. According to this website:
https://aviewfrommyseat.com/photo/234598/petco+park/section-110/row-46/seat-6/
It looks like you can’t see the scoreboard or fly balls. My kids were so excited about row 1 but now we are disappointed.
Anyone able to get tickets for Petco in San Diego? If so, what section?
Does anyone know when the next batch of tickets will be released?
No, nobody knows in advance and Capital One doesn’t announce it until they have been available for days (and mostly gone). We have caught it on the release day the last couple of years and posted right away (usually someone comments here if they see it before I do). The last couple of years, they released the June and July games around the end of April (somewhere in the 20’s of April). Of course, we have no idea whether they’ll follow that schedule again (and it wasn’t exactly the same day both of the last two seasons). Nonetheless, it might be worth getting in the habit of logging in every morning to check from now through the end of the month (though of course keep in mind that maybe they won’t release until May this time — your guess is as good as mine!).
Funny enough, the PR team emailed me to let me know about the availability of Final Four tickets this year. The problem is that they emailed me about 9 days after those tickets became available & sold out. They don’t seem to have an articulated plan in terms of releasing stuff and info.
thank you so much! Reminder set on my calendar – these are a great snag for me, so I hope to get em again.
Does anyone know which row (not section) the Mets home game tickets are in? I have a pending order but have not received the tickets yet and Capital One have given me 3 different answers
It should be Row 4 in the Delta section. I received a CapOne email to clarify the seating.
Did they change the seats from the previous year? I wasn’t in Row 4 last year (see the picture in the post as that’s me at Citi Field using these seats last year).
I had all of my tickets that I purchased right after Nick published cancelled by VividSeats with no explanation given. It has been an ordeal via Capital One getting them refunded as well. Better luck to those of you trying!
Did they get refunded? Did you have to call?
I’ve been on and off the phone with generic customer service and vivid seats (who call themselves capital one entertainment). It’s been quite a shit show. I got 57k points back which were clawed back (re-taken from my act) because the customer service lady didn’t understand what had happened. I had to very patiently go through each order to resolve and now am waiting “1 to 2 billing cycles” to get back to where I started. They are awfully surgical at taking points but not giving them back.
I’m in the same boat, but haven’t reached out to them. Any pointers on who to contact first? Capital one or vivid seats? …
I started with emailing capital one entertainment and got a call back I believe … Don’t think I ever directly called vivid.
Was able to pick up a weekend home game in May from this reminder, thank you Nick!
thank you for this post! I got tix to a Braves/Rangers game in April, so excited to have great seats compared to what I usually buy with cold hard cash to sit in a nosebleed – suddenly loving my Capital One points more! Keep us posted on when the tix drop for the remainder of the season – such a deal!
Hey Nick, which stadium did you receive the call for? I called regarding my Yankees ticket, and the customer service says my order looks fine.
To purchase 6 tickets, can I make two separate orders for 4 and 2 tickets?
There are only 4 cardholder exclusive seats at each game.
Thanks for posting, somehow this was available for my favorite team’s Opening Day still!
Thanks Nick and FM team! You guys are the best providing timely updates at deals like these. I was looking last night at Cap1 site and didn’t see them and then got lucky today b/c I was on the FM site. The RedSox tickets are fantastic seats and Fenway is graceland for sports fans – in for 3 games
THANKS!!!! I got opening day tickets behind the visitors dugout.
FYI for anyone who bought tickets at Fenway Park in FB 37, Row I. Capital One made a mistake with the ticket listings as there is no row I in that section, and row I is actually supposed be row L. They’re calling purchase holders to make sure you’re ok with that.
If you have a capital one cash back card (I have the savor one) you can book at $40 with rewards cash!