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TORONTO — The Toronto Blue Jays have cashed in on the fact that Detroit Tigers tickets have become such a hot item in the Motor City.
The Blue Jays have received permission from Major League Baseball Advanced Media to receive access to the site's consumer information base, and they have e-mailed fans of the Tigers and Boston Red Sox offering them tickets to games at the Rogers Centre on April 5-6 (Red Sox) and April 18-21 (Tigers) before they go on sale to the public. The April 4 home opener against Boston isn't included in the offer.
According to Blue Jays president Paul Godfrey, the club sold $10,000 worth of tickets to the Tigers series by the end of the business day yesterday.
The club had no report on sales in Boston.
"It's off to a reasonable start," said Godfrey, who admitted he was sensitive to the idea that fans in other cities were getting the first choice of tickets to single games and who said the club was closely monitoring the response before it decides to pursue the plan any further. The Blue Jays will not put individual game tickets on sale in Toronto until March 2.
"We can control the flow of tickets, so if the sales get really hot, we can simply shut them down," Godfrey said. "We don't want any surprises for our fans.
"April is usually a tough month to sell tickets, and this is a good thing from the point of view of tourism, too. It's business for the hotels."
The Tigers met their capped season-ticket figure after an aggressive winter of wheeling and dealing that saw the team bring in Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis, and Red Sox face-value tickets simply don't exist.
