Update 5/10/24: June and July games have been added!
Update 2/29/24: As pointed out by Chris in the comments, April and May 2024 games are now available.
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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I snagged 4 tix to the Yankees game in August! Thanks for the heads up!
Seems like There’s a better chance in annual daily getaways for Hyatt points than finding these tickets. Struck out in 4 games at end of August.
which team?
Tried yankees and nationals in NY and DC end of august.
Did I just miss Texas Rangers for Aug/September? I know they go quick but I was able to get a couple games in the June/July release….
Never mind, they are just not advertising them but they are there! Yay!
you guys are without a friggin doubt the best blog on Boardingarea.. the stuff you guys come up with is top top tier. I constantly get so much info/idea from you guys. Great stuff. Thank you so much
Thanks for the heads up. Just got some great tickets to Cardinals at Royals friday night game right behind home plate. Resellers currently selling tickets in those sections at $150+
Ugh man, tried my best for yankees tickets august 9th and 10th because my family and I will actually be in NYC that weekend. Not surprised the are gone but a bit bummed, would have been really cool to take the family
don’t worry, someone will be happy to resell them to you at 3x the cost on seatgeek/stubhub. >:(
Taking Dad to Wrigley, thanks guys!
Do y’all think this is available for every team? Whenever I check for SF giants there are no good seats for 5000 miles. 🙁
They probably sold out before you got there. Phillies tickets were gone within 10 minutes.
I wonder how folks figure out the time the tickets are released…
Keep looking.. But don’t believe the “Cardholder Exclusive.” Instead, hover around the field, at field level, behind the dugouts [screenshot in the article above]. You’ll eventually see a price that seems out of place – $40, instead something in the $100s. Click on it & you might still be in luck.
Ooh thanks for that tip!
I just bought the Phillies tickets now for Aug 18th. Were you only looking at a specific days?
Edit: Seeing them still available on some other days too
The home games were all removed from having the cardholder exclusive tags. Looks like some are popping back up now or aren’t tagged.
Figured out what was up with the Giants tickets. They are listed in the wrong section. Check a few sections up above where the tickets actually are and you’ll see 4 tickets for row O in lower box. I am confident they just put it in the wrong place, since row O does not exist in lower box and only exists in the Field Club where the tickets always are. Go go go!
Wow! OK! Looking now! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!
I got four tix to Cards game last of the season. Section 124. keep trying
I looked at all the dates for home games in Aug/Sept that I am available, and there were no seats for 5000 points. I saw one game that had seats that were $40 when I hovered over the section, but the points for those seats were 7000-ish and nearby seats weren’t that much more expensive. I think the Cap One seats are just sold out for SF Giants. Another funny thing that I noticed is that in general, the tickets aren’t terribly expensive.I suppose that’s because the Giants aren’t doing too great right now.
The section for CapOne seats is ONLY 124. If it says $40, those are the Cap One seats most likely. But….yes….you gotta be fast. By now they are most likely all gone. FWIW, it has been section 124 for as long as they have been doing this. So…next year….assuming they continue this promo, you’ll know exactly where to look.
Cardholder exclusive tickets just got posted again for August and September.
Doing the lord’s work
Thank you so much! Got the two games I was wanting to go to!
Never mind… I just got an email saying the tickets are no longer available and they cancelled my order. This happen to anyone else?
happened to me during a drop last year. Super frustrating. Sorry you had it get to you
If the tickets are in my name, but I want my brother to go. Do I need to have them transferred or can I just give him my MLB app login? I assume they don’t card to match ID to the ticket right?
You are able to transfer them after the tickets are in your MLB app. No one in my party was carded at the Phillies stadium with the tickets purchased thru this Capital One cardholder exclusive.
Do we know if August and September will be released as well, or have they already been and I missed it? It does not look like they have been and is much closer than when June and July were made available.
I’ve been watching for Aug & Sept also – still haven’t noticed anything. Anyone know if they will be released or if this is still going on?
With 1 week left to go, I think we’re not seeing anymore tix. Probably too many people reselling them.
Yep. Just checked stubhub for a game and the 2 capital one seats next to me are listed for $149 each.
This is why we can’t have nice things. I hope they don’t sell those tix. God forbid they have to watch a baseball game /s
I would prefer they just did something like limit people to a few (or even one) game per year.
My local team has it set up where the tickets they sell as part of a promo can’t be listed on seatgeek, I believe it is set up to just block the particular barcode as ‘not eligible for resale.’ It adds enough friction to the resale process to dissuade people scooping them up. I think would be a good solution here –
We snagged tix to the Mets/Cubs at Wrigley 6/22. I can see they’re section 26 row 9, but am trying to figure out what the seat #’s are. Anyone been to Wrigley using these tix yet that could share that info? I called C1 entertainment line(“Moes Electrical Svc”, the number from the bottom of my confirmation email and he couldn’t tell me. We’re trying to find some other tix for the rest of our group & it’d be nice to know where exactly the seats are! Thanks in advance!
C1 has removed the ability to buy any seats that aren’t Cardholder Exclusives.
Hope they bring it back. I prefer when the good seats are harder to find…
It looks like they just added it back.
awesome update – got 3 games!
Just bought some for a weekday Dodger game that is an afternoon start. I didn’t realize it when I purchased and I likely won’t be able to attend. I thought it was a night game and pulled the trigger too quickly before they got snapped up. Terms say you can’t sell but has anyone had luck trying to sell these?
Can’t list them for resale on Ticketmaster/StubHub (it blocks you from listing them — I know because I bought tickets to a game that I ended up being unable to attend) and they generally don’t get fulfilled until a few days before the game. That said, the tickets *can* be transferred to someone else. When I couldn’t go to a game, I gave my tickets away to a friend, transferring to them through the MLB Ballpark app — and I’ve also given away a couple of games as gifts like that.
I’ve flipped a bunch of these on Stubhub. You usually get them 2 days or so before the game which is enough time to upload them for the re-sale.
I tried listing on StubHub last year and there was no way to transfer the tickets there — it was like it was blocked for these tickets when they came in. I did try listing them when they came in because I couldn’t make the game, but they wouldn’t upload to StubHub. Weird — maybe I did something wrong?
Prob best to keep some things to ourselves to avoid attracting the wrong crowd… these are already tough to snag as is
Same thing happened to me. Looks like I’m going to try and figure out a way to get these offloaded…
Wondering the same thing as I just learned that I won’t be able to attend a NYM game I purchases for July as I will be away. Strange that there would be conflicting reports on whether or not these can be sold on Stub Hub once the tickets arrive a few days before the game. I suppose I could give them away but would prefer to sell and get my money back.
Cap One Entertainment aka Vivid Seats canceled all 4 games that I bought with points – they said that I sold too many tickets from previous drops. That’s baloney because I’ve only sold unused tickets to 3 games in the past two seasons. Is this a COE issue or Vivid Seats? Had to call several times over 2-3 weeks to get my 70,000 points back.