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.
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
A reader sent this to me a few days ago and my initial thought was that baseball has so many games that tickets aren’t always very expensive. While that’s true, the seats available through Capital One aren’t the cheap seats in most cases.
I first looked up Citi Field as I planned to give tickets to a relative to see a Mets game. I was a bit more drawn in when I saw the approximate view from the section where the seats are located. Here it is from RateYourSeats.com:
The first game I looked up was about $200 a ticket in that section (the screen shot above shows a different game with $101 tickets). Capital One is offering seats for 5,000 miles per ticket to almost every game. I came across a few exceptions — the first few games I tried at Yankee Stadium only had non-exclusive seats you could buy at poor value (about 0.8c per mile) or with high service fees. However, I eventually found some games at Yankee Stadium with 5K-mile seats (which appear to be one row in front of this one). Again, these are seats I wouldn’t otherwise buy.
I ended up talking it over with the family member receiving the tickets and we found that Philadelphia has seats 5 rows behind the visiting team’s dugout, which seemed like even more fun — she’ll 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). It seems that Capital One has the same seats available for each game and once the “cardholder exclusive” seats are gone, they may sell the publicly-available VividSeats options at poorer value.
I ended up buying a couple of pairs of the cardholder exclusive tickets and they were 10K miles for two tickets in each case. The same seats for the same game with the same proximity to the field in Philadelphia were going for north of $100 a ticket on the secondhand market and the Yankee stadium tickets I bought were north of $200 per ticket otherwise, so paying 5K miles per seat seemed like a solid value. In many cases, you can do even better. There were no additional fees beyond the 10K miles for two tickets. The reader who originally pointed this out to me redeemed for tickets that were otherwise going for about $300 a seat. While I’d never pay that much for baseball tickets, the point is this could be a lot of fun for a fan.
The tickets at Citi Field (where the Mets play) are in the Delta Club section. The New York Mets website indicates that the seats in that section are fully-padded theater-style seats and that there are a couple of full bars and a number of food outlets in that club section. Apparently, you can even get in-seat service from Shake Shack. No word as to whether that triggers the $10 monthly credit on the Gold card :-).
I don’t know whether Capital One intends to continue offering tickets to games throughout the season or if this is just an early-season offering. 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 I’d be tempted by this if a game lined up with my travel plans over the next couple of months. If Capital One continues this into the summer, I will almost certainly catch a game at some point.
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.
Update: I’ve noticed some confusion about this deal because there are two types of tickets being sold in the Capital One Entertainment portal: The Capital One cardholder exclusive tickets that this post is about are the same 4 seats for every game. If you only see one set of tickets available (either 2 or 4 seats) and they are 5K miles per seat like as shown here, they are the Capital One 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.
If you see 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. A seat map that looks like this with many different section choices indicates that they are not the exclusive seats.
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.
Great find snagged some seats but they now have an 1100pt service fee on 4 tickets which was odd but still a good deal
Thanks Nick – fantastic update on June & July availability – just snagged more amazing tickets. Seeing the Braves in Atlanta and D.C. in great seats for 4 consecutive months.
This was a great mothers day present. A good tip would be to look for games that have fireworks, free hats, or bobbleheads included. Those promos seem to increase the price of tickets on the open market. 20k miles for my family to get together over a braves game and watch the fireworks sounds like great value to me!
My husband and I have a trip to LA in August and plan to go to 3 games… Dodgers, Angels and Padres. Fingers crossed that they offer tickets for these games as well! We are trying to do this trip as cheaply as possible… points and free night certs and gift cards, etc.
Anyone who ordered Red Sox tickets get theirs yet? My game is in a few weeks and I haven’t heard anything beyond the initial order confirmed email
Yesterday I ordered 2 Red Sox tickets for their July 4 game at Fenway Park. I received the ticket forwarding email and got them via the Ballpark app this morning.
Thanks – were these the “Cardholder Exclusive” tickets priced at 5,000 points or just a random other set?
Hopefully Ken can answer you, but my experience thus far is that tickets for a Phillies game came via email a couple of days sooner than the estimate. I also bought Yankees and Mets tickets and in both cases the email indicates tickets will be delivered two or three days before the game and I haven’t heard anything new apart from that confirmation email. I didn’t really expect to hear anything until a couple days before the game. I think the system clearly notes that some parks don’t release tickets until 48 hours before the event. In that confirmation email, I think it should show the estimated delivery date. I wouldn’t expect to hear anything before then. I assume that’s just a measure taken to prevent people from reselling them.
Looked for Red Sox as a birthday gift and came up empty in June (July not possible for travel reasons), but really great offer! We already have May Cubs tickets with this deal.
I gotta think they will come out with some experiences as well, sort of like SPG did with the Cubs at Wrigley (play softball on Wrigley Field, have your kid go stand next to a Cubs player, etc.) Typically the prices on these things are much lower when they first come out so it’ll be important to keep an eye out if this happens.
Just picked up 4 tickets to a Rangers game in July for 20K points. Right behind home plate. Seems like they are $230ish on reseller sites, so I count it as good value. Should be a fun first baseball with the kiddos.
Just got 4 front row seats behind home plate at Chase Field (Phoenix). Seats in the row behind are going for $260 each, so seems like $1,000 of value for 20k points. Lots of tickets still available in Phoenix, just need to finish my Venture X minimum spend to grab some more. I am not reselling.
That’s fantastic! 5 cents per point!!!
I know it doesn’t matter if you wouldn’t pay it.
But for baseball fans, seems like cap one card is the best card to use for regular spend.
Ticket availability pushed out to July 31 but I haven’t been able to find any capital one exclusive tickets (checked LA/DC). Anyone have any better luck?
I checked all of the giants games and they were all gone. Either they have all been grabbed already or they haven’t been loaded yet.
Or perhaps they’re still intending to sell tickets through their partnership with vivid seats, but not offer more Capital One exclusives.
I doubt they’re all gone now because I had literally checked the day before Mike’s comment above you and July games weren’t available. So at most they’ve been out for about a day.
It is also possible that some ticket reseller was prepared this time and gobbled them all up within a few hours.
In case you missed the update, 5K tickets became available for June and July at some point last night.
Thanks so much, Nick. I have grabbed tics to 4 different games in 3 different ballparks. Amazing deal!
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They really need to fix this search engine – bordering on a bait and switch when you’re clearly in a “cardholder exclusive” section but when they’re sold out of them you’re taking to a completely different section with no warning. No wonder there’s a lot of confusion. Great deals – but so limited it’s more like a lottery. yes – I’m a couple dates late to this but all gone for every Yankee game it seems. Would have been nice for them to just remove them from the exclusive section so as not to waste my time.
Fair point that they are doing a very poor job of making it clear when you’re not looking at cardholder exclusive tickets.
I’m not arguing that these are still widely available (indeed at 4 seats per game, about 26 home games per team, and 30 teams, there were only probably a little over three thousand tickets available to start which, while not necessarily what I’d classify as a “lottery” is still obviously very limited), but the very first game I just right now tried at Yankee Stadium (April 12th, Blue Jays at the Yankees) had all 4 seats available. I would not at all be surprised if the most desirable games from the most popular teams are gone since days have passed since we covered it and other blogs have also covered it since, but it doesn’t appear that everything is gone. Hopefully they add more games!
We’re a 10 hour drive from the nearest MLB team so we regularly make trips to LA, last one was fall 2019 and we found back to back nights that the Angels and Dodgers were in town. We shelled out a ton of cash for these same seats to the Angels, my son snagged a foul ball and even got it signed from the dugout. How crazy awesome to have this option, so cheap for such great seats!
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Retail value of seats was $275 apiece. 5000 pts instead!!! Huge saving. Need to hunt around for seats. As Nick says, if there are more than one set of seats available, you’re in the wrong place. Or they have sold out their CapOne seats. I bought tix and when I went back the capone seats were not available and there were many tix offered. Deal seems to end in June. But who knows?
Thanks for the great write-up, Nick! My son is 8 and over the past year has really gotten into baseball. His friends have season tickets to the Padres in a similar area, but at the home dugout. These are about the same location seats at the visitor dugout and he’s been wanting to get the “upfront seats”, but I have a hard time justifying $70 plus for a meaningless baseball game when there are 162 per season (not to mention inflated food and drink). This will be perfect and I never explore Cap One experiences before as my mindset is always on travel redemptions. Thanks again and awesome article from one of my favorite travel bloggers.
I like it! I’m sure he’ll have a blast. I remember being a kid and being over the moon in the nosebleed seats — I’m sure sitting so close would have blown my mind.
Wowsie. A’s fan here. Opening day. Superlative seats. 4th row. Thanks Nick.
Sounds awesome! Enjoy.
Has anyone received the tickets you bought? My confirmation email says tickets will come on May 8th for a game on May 11th. Could make reselling very tricky if they’re just coming 3 days beforehand.
Same thing for me. Both games say the tickets will arrive 2 or 3 days before the game via instant download. I’m not very surprised, they’re probably not looking to cater to resellers. I didn’t get them to resell anyway.
Thanks for the confirmation!
Thank you for posting this Nick!
This makes the value proposition for Capital One X for baseball fans much much better long term! If you like really good baseball tickets, this is like 2-4 cents per point. (I know points are only worth what you’d pay…). But getting 10k miles annually on the Cap1 venture X can now mean 2 great seats at MLB game which really ups the card value if you can find seats you’d like!
Also, if you are interested in mlb.tv, I’ve read that will be discounted for Cap1 customers.
Thanks for the valuable tips from a baseball fan!
And thanks for a great blog, really enjoyed your write up for buying a car for mega Amex points!
T-Mobile Tuesdays this week has the annual free year of MLB.tv. My area has sketchy T-Mobile coverage in certain parts of town but I’m not bothered enough to give up free baseball
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Picked up tickets to 2 different SF Giants games in May. Field Club, section 124. Resale market is $170-$200+/ticket for each game. Thanks!
Just got Braves tickets this way. They charged “$4.80” tax for two tickets, and the only choice was to pay with 600 Capital One miles/points. Still, it was 10,600 points for tickets that were easily $200 on resale sites.
Was charged a flat 5000 points per ticket all in. No additional fees. Bought at two stadiums. I think you didn’t get the deal Nick wrote about. There should only be at most four tickets and ONLY those tix available that game when you search. If there are more tickets they have sold out for that game.
Nope. I definitely got the deal Nick wrote about. There were ONLY four tickets available for the game I searched. Site showed the same strange “from $40” value that Nick reported, The tickets were definitely never, ever priced at anywhere remotely close to the implied $0.008 per point valuation. Everything was exactly the same except they charged me tax. Even if you doubt me, you can search other Braves games and see for yourself. I don’t know why they charged me tax, but can I assure you that I am not a moron.
I got the same on brewers tickets
Every ticket I see (at Dodger Stadium) they tack on the same fees that vivid would charge you – and make you pay in miles. Plus I’m not seeing any good deals – prices are all basically the same cash value as you’d pay through Vivid. Maybe it’s just the exception though. Oh, correction – I changed the date from a Sat game to a Fri game and it only gave me 1 option. 5k tickets for seats that would normally cost about 170 or so (before fees). So I guess it’s very date/game specific for this stadium at least. Thursday game gave me the same 1 option.
You’re not looking at the Capital One exclusive seats then. They must not be available for the games you’re looking at. The Capital One exclusive seats at Dodgers Stadium are in Field Box 24 and are 5000 mi each with no additional fees. If you’re seeing seats in any other sections, the Capital One exclusive seats for that game must be gone.
Yes found them. They were gone for the Sat (and Sun) game, but available for Thurs and Fri. Guess I’m going Friday then (to see my Phillies of course).
It looked for a minute like there were only 2 or 4 tickets available for Fenway to see the Red Sox, then I changed the ticket count to 5+ and a ton of availability came up, starting at 1,750 miles per ticket. Not sure if it’s the same everywhere but could be a HUGE bargain for a family.
Thanks for sharing Nick, I had actually been looking at grabbing some Mets tickets for this summer. 2 Delta Club tickets for my dates were going for $185 a piece, a steal at 10,000 C1 vs. $370.
Awesome. Yeah, that’s exactly the type of thing I was seeing — well worth it when they have the cardholder exclusive tickets available because the value against cash prices tended to be excellent. I’m betting the $185 a piece you’re quoting is before all of the fees get tacked on, also — those resale sites often turn out to be quite a bit more than the initial cash price you see. Definitely solid deals here if you’re a baseball fan.