Fall is in the air, and the final eight in baseball are almost set. It's a special time of year for baseball fans and even better if your team is preparing for game 163. Whether your team will make it into the 170s is tougher to predict and, as all fans know, dependent on good pitching, timely hitting and a few lucky bounces.
According to Vegas, the bounces will favor the white-hot Phillies, at 11/4, followed closely by the Yankees at 3/1 and the Rays at 4/1. While Vegas is a good indicator of market sentiment, at TiqIQ we like to factor tickets into all our decision-making and decided to ask Mr. Ticket Market who it thought would play in the World Series.
Based on price alone, the Mr. Ticket Market says that the Giants are the NL favorites and the Rangers are the AL favorites. However, when looking at tickets, price only tells half the story. The other important factor is volume, or how many tickets are currently available for sale. If a seller takes the time to list a ticket, they think there's a reasonable chance that ticket will get sold. If nobody is listing tickets, they don't expect that the event will happen.
When considering volume, the Giants fall out of the race, leaving the Phillies as the NL favorite. The AL picture is almost as clear cut. While the Rangers have the highest average price, they have only medium volume, and not enough to be considered a true favorite. This leaves the Yankees and Rays, with the two highest volumes, as AL favorites. Vegas and Mr. Ticket Market are in agreement.
If you're a betting man, though, the combination of a $1,250 average price and 10/1 odds (not to mention Cliff Lee) make the Rangers an interesting place to drop a hundred bucks, especially if your team didn't make it past 162.