Canadians not allowed to buy tickets for Blue Jays post-season away games at Yankee Stadium
The New York Yankees face the Boston Red Sox this week in a three-game wild card series to determine who will face the Toronto Blue Jays in the American League Division Series (ALDS) playoff. But if the Yankees get that honour, Canadian fans won’t be able to attend any of the games in New York. That team is restricting ticket purchases to residents of New York and several nearby states.
On Sunday, the Jays clinched the American League East division title with a win against the Tampa Bay Rays, meaning they move to the five-game ALDS, which will begin Saturday at Rogers Centre in Toronto.
Two home games will be followed by at least one matchup in either New York or Boston, plus another if necessary, and then a potential fifth game back at Rogers Centre.
Tickets to all post-season games are expensive and hard to get. But Yankees tickets are out of reach for Canadians. The team has restricted ticket sales to residents of New York and the neighbouring states of New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania.
Notably left off that list are residents of Vermont and Massachusetts, which also border New York State — and Canada, where the vast majority of Blue Jays fans reside.
“Yankee Stadium is located in Bronx, New York,” the team’s website notes, somewhat obviously, in an “important event information” box that pops up if buyers try to choose a potential ALDS game.
“Sales to this event will be restricted to residents of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. Residency will be based on credit card billing address. Orders by residents outside New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania will be canceled without notice and refunds given.”
It’s a fiscal shame for Canadians who might want to travel south to cheer on their team. That’s because, as of Tuesday, tickets for game three of the ALDS start at just US$107 (about $149 Canadian) for an upper-deck seat overlooking Yankee Stadium’s right field.
Rogers Centre games, on the other hand, start at $289 for resale tickets in a similar position in the ballpark for Saturday’s ALDS kickoff game. Lowest prices for Sunday’s game are $318, and for a potential game seven they start at $358.
Canada’s Ticketmaster site doesn’t even show the not-for-Canadians games. Searching for a Yankees-Jays matchup on that site will bring up only the Toronto post-season games, followed by a four-game series between the two teams in May of 2026 , part of next year’s regular season.
Everything changes if the Boston Red Sox beat the Yankees in this week’s best-of-three, however. Fans from Canada (and anywhere else) will be eligible to buy tickets to watch a potential Jay-Sox ALDS game at Fenway Park, with a representative for that team telling National Post: “The Red Sox and Boston will not be turning away fans from other states or out of the country to purchase tickets.”
Prices are steeper in Boston, however, with tickets as of Tuesday starting at US$238 (about $331 Canadian, comparable to a Jays game) for the first of two potential home games there in the ALDS.
National Post has also reached out to the Seattle Mariners, the Detroit Tigers and the Cleveland Guardians, one of whom the Jays might face if they make it to the next round of playoffs, to ask about their ticket sale policies.
A spokesperson for the Tigers said tickets for those games are not yet for sale, but: “ Ontario is usually included in the group that can buy tickets.”
There are six National League teams vying for a berth in the World Series, which begins on Oct. 24 and could finish as late as Nov. 1.
If the Yankees ticket travails sounds familiar, that’s because a similar situation bedevilled Toronto Maple Leafs fans two years ago. In 2023, when the Leafs moved to the second round of the NHL playoffs to face the Florida Panthers, that team barred non-U.S. residents (i.e., Canadians) from buying tickets to its home games.
The issue doesn’t seem to have cropped up this year, with tour operators organizing trips south for Canadians to watch the same two teams battle it out. However, travel to the U.S. from Canada was also down due to the trade war and other issues between the two countries.
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Unpublished Newswire
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