[June / July added!] Baseball fans: Capital One once again has great seats for 5,000 miles each

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Update 5/15/23: This deal is back with June and July 2023 games now available. I have been checking this daily and the cardholder exclusives were not available a couple of hours ago, so this updated sometime after 12pm Eastern time today. I was able to score tickets for a couple of summertime games just a few minutes ago, but I had to search for the dates I wanted and the results are only showing about 5 dates at a time as shown here:
Reminder: there are only 4 cardholder exclusives available for each game, then the rest of the tickets are a poor value (don’t be surprised if the most desirable games go quickly or are already gone). Read the whole post for details if you are new to this redemption.

Update 3/9/23: This deal is back for April and May 2023 games. Many of the April games in New York and Los Angeles are gone, but a lot of May games are still available even in the largest markets (and some April games are still available in some markets). I imagine that June and July won’t be released until late next month like last year. 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. H/T: Reader Nick in our Frequent Miler Insiders group and Dan’s Deals.

Update 4/28/22: Capital One has now stocked tickets for June and July 2022 games. Late last night, I picked up 4 seats to a Sunday afternoon New York game for 20,000 points total (seats in the same section were going for north of $200 on the resale market). Note that some desirable games are either already unavailable or may not have been available in the first place (for instance, I found no tickets for Yankees / Mets or Yankees / Red Sox games or for giveaway games I checked at other stadiums like free bobblehead or cap games). Still, there are some great values to be had on summertime games given how good the seats are when Capital One exclusives are available for 5K points per seat.

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.

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.

Screen shot from SeatGeek.com of the view from Dodger Stadium Field Box 24 — where you can sit for 5,000 miles per ticket.

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.

These are *not* the cardholder exclusive seats I’m talking about and are mostly a poor deal.

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.

Capital One appears to be labeling these are $40 to keep the cents per point consistent even though these tickets ordinarily sell for much more.

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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JalenR

$50-75 to see a baseball game? eh

Jay

You obviously are in the wrong neighborhood, so take a right turn, drive on out of here and have a nice trip

Lantean

Does C1 ever have US Open tickets?

Rich T.

Thanks again Nick! I so appreciate the updates on this – scored 4 for Braves vs Mets!

Esther

Wish I saw this article before I bought today without checking fees etc
And I did it the wrong way! Now can’t cancel todays purchase

Cary

Thank you, Nick! Earlier today I got my son, a huge Braves fan, 4 tickets for his birthday for the Braves vs Red Sox @ Fenway in July. The seats are 12 rows from the field near home plate. I would never have spent $1,000 on them (the going rate for 4 tickets in that section on Stubhub) but getting them for 20K miles total was a steal. Thank you for sending out this alert as soon as you found out about them being available. Add this to one of the many reasons why FM has become one of my favorite sites this year.

Domino

Dude takes more selfies than the average 13 year old girl

JalenR

look at all the fan boys that run to defend

tbr

I see nothing(no cardmember exclusives or vivid tickets) available either home or away for any team. I search the team, location, then choosing dates but nothing. It doesn’t show teams schedules only “no events found”. I see Yankees parking and cardinals in London

LTL

I should add – it says “Cardholder Exclusive” for every date I checked (pretty much every weekend home game in June/July plus weekdays in June) and they are all the Vivid tix. I would assume they all sold out but weirdly Phillies AWAY games show available (Oakland, Pittsburgh, etc.) but home games don’t.

LTL

Looking at the Philadelphia stadium I see hundreds of seats which are the Vivid Seats bad deal tickets. How can I find the 5k tickets – is there no option other than the click through each game, and see what’s priced at 5000 points? (And if the 5000 pt seats are in the nosebleed section, those are the Vivid tix and not the C1 exclusives?)

Shay

Siiick alert on this one today!

Mark

Reyes Thank you so much for the heads up on this! Glad I’m on your email list. Just snagged 4 tickets to Tigers at Twins in the 7th row behind the dugout. My wife is from Poland and has never seen a baseball game before so this will make it much more exciting. Got the tix for 5000 points each.

Last edited 12 days ago by Mark
Eric

I just bought 8 tickets to watch my favorite team in a series on the road, they charged me ~400 points per ticket in fees. Still, 5400 points per ticket for tickets that are going for ~$175 on resale markets right now is a pretty good deal.

Chuck

– May want to update post on taxes/fees. For whatever reason it seems this chagned on C1. Last year I got my 4x Tickets for 20k. This year they added taxes of around $10 to the deal and the only way to pay those is at the .75cent point redemption.

Still a smoking deal for the tickets I got but this is a change in their system.

David

Can confirm Yankee stadium also just the flat 5,000 per ticket.

Chuck

It does seem to be state specific (I think from what I’ve done and searched) and differnet YoY. I can say Wisconsin is charging full sales tax but relative to points. (So my 4tickets for 20k points costs an additional 1100 points (5.5% my local tax rate).
Odd but since I’m getting 3-4 cents/point it’s still a no-brainer.

Kevin

Just picked up tickets for a Brewers game. 5th row right behind the plate. My daughter is going to love this!

Chuck

🙂 – Another MKE local on FM! Hope you have fun, the seats were great when we went on this deal last year.

Kevin

Definitely not local. We make the 6 hour drive from DSM every year for a series.

Sadie

I was able to get tickets to a Mets game in Pittsburgh in June and one at Citi Field in July. The June Pirates tickets were emailed but not the July Mets tickets. Anyone else see the confirmation in CO, but haven’t received the tickets via email?

David

Likely depends on stadium policy. Yankee tickets said actual tickets won’t be available until a few days prior to game.

David

Thanks – I’ve been checking every day or so but luckily saw your post almost immediately after you posted it and snagged 4 for Yankees in July. By the time I looked for a few other days most were gone (a few were still left but days I couldn’t attend

Matt Bailey

My son and I enjoyed the Cap 1 seats at the Braves game last weekend, had a great time, excellent seats for 5000 points! Looking today Cap 1 seems to have reloaded their inventory of baseball tickets, but not at the 5000 point deals again, the pricing seems based on actual ticket cost.

Matt Bailey

I’ve been stalking the Cap 1 site almost daily and those seemed to have popped up just in the last day. With them loaded up on ticket availability hopefully soon we’ll see the discounted tix back. I’d love to pick up some more for summer games.

jim jam

Same here. I feel like I missed an announcement because I feel like most tix are gone

Brian

I sat in the Cap 1 seats at Petco Park yesterday for the Padres game and then sat in very cheap seats in the upper deck for today’s game. The upper deck seats were better. The Cap 1 tickets are in the 46th row, the very last one, of section 110. This puts them way under the overhang from the 200 section above, such that you’re almost looking through a window at the game and you can’t see any fly balls until they come back down. I don’t recommend them.

Beavis

If only NHL. . . Go Knights!

Amit

So far, so good. No cancellation.

Thanks for the tip, Nick!

KLUE

I got a lot of cancels and I’m very upset about it.

Cohagan

I got a few MLB games yesterday, received both a “We Received Your Ticket Order” email and then a “Ticket Order Confirmation” email. However just now I got a “Tickets No Longer Available” email for all the orders. Sure enough they have been canceled in my Capital One account… pretty sketchy

Rich T.

Big thanks Nick! I was able to grab a pair to a Braves game – thanks for the update.

David

This is really ridiculous. How many card holders do they have? With most people probably getting all 4 tickets for a game they can serve what . . . 20 card members in a market? And would not be surprised to see these end up being resold . . .

Brian

Does anybody know when august games were released last year? Have my eye on a particular weekend when my team comes to town.

Grant

Dang, some great home games are sold out already. Do we know when / how many days before the month that May-June tickets will be available?

Mr. Seg

All gone in NY… any trick or idea for when they will be released?

Last edited 2 months ago by Mr. Seg
Kim

A $8.20 fee per two tickets at National Stadium in DC, brings the cost to 11,025 Capital One Miles. So fees may depend on the stadium where the games is to be played.

Linda

Are these only for New York games?

Linda

That’s great!

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[…] saves the points and earns the points, I thought “cool”, but what else? It turns out, there’s a lot of what else. People are getting absolutely insane value for their Capital One Venture Miles as a […]

Mark

Did they release all of august and September? It looks like some cities have tics and others have none – like the dodgers. I’m worried I missed it.

Charles Fastner

Great find snagged some seats but they now have an 1100pt service fee on 4 tickets which was odd but still a good deal

Rich T.

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.

M B

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!

Amy

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.

Cohagan

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

KenC

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.

Cohagan

Thanks – were these the “Cardholder Exclusive” tickets priced at 5,000 points or just a random other set?

KenC

Just saw it now. Yes those were exclusive tickets that cost me 5,000 points per ticket. I sat in a very good spot.

Gerald prosciutto

Hi Ken hope you get this. Do you recall the precise tickets you were able to get to narrow down my search please

KenC

Me and my friend sat in field box 37 Row L 1-4. Those were very good seats with 5,000 points per ticket. Cash price at that time in a similar spot was in the range of $200 / ticket.

Susan

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.

Nick

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.

John

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.

Clay

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.

Tom

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.

Mike

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?

Mark

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.

Mark

It is also possible that some ticket reseller was prepared this time and gobbled them all up within a few hours.

Mark

Thanks so much, Nick. I have grabbed tics to 4 different games in 3 different ballparks. Amazing deal!

[…] turns out, there’s a lot of what else. People are getting absolutely insane value for their Capital One Venture Miles as a […]

David

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.

Robert

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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SamBam

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?

Mike Z

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.

SamBam

Wowsie. A’s fan here. Opening day. Superlative seats. 4th row. Thanks Nick.

Peter

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.

Peter

Thanks for the confirmation!

Tom

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!

Robert

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

[…] Frequent Miler covers the great availability of top baseball seats for low point cost. It turns out that spending $125 million gets Capital One access to plenty of discounted seat […]

Hpack

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!

Last edited 1 year ago by Hpack
Chief Babaracus

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.

SamBam

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.

Chief Babaracus

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.

Charles Fastner

I got the same on brewers tickets

Scott

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.

Last edited 1 year ago by Scott
Scott

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).

Brian

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.

Big Chungus

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.