The Seattle Mariners announced plans for a new addition to T-Mobile Park on Wednesday morning, giving fans the “opportunity to become a permanent part of Mariners history.”
The organization has created “Legacy Plaza,” an area just inside of the center field gate. 
It will be home to the new statue, which will be unveiled on Sept. 3 that features Mike Cameron and Mark McLemore carrying the American flag on Sept. 19, 2001, after the team clinched the American League West.
The plaza will also feature a special wall of commemorative bats and baseball medallions available to fans for purchase. 
In a statement, Mariners chairman John Stanton called the 2001 season “a momentous time” for the community and the organization. 
“The new Legacy Plaza reflects the deep connection between the Mariners and our community, commemorating one of the most meaningful moments in team history, while reinforcing our commitment to creating opportunities for youth across the Pacific Northwest,” Stanton said. “The Legacy Plaza brings together our history, our fans and our commitment to the future of baseball and softball in our region.”
Proceeds from the purchases of bats or medallions will benefit the Mariners’ Legacy Field projects in Washington state. That program helps enhance youth baseball and softball fields in Washington state 
The unveiling of the Legacy Plaza will be held on Sept. 3 prior to that night’s game (6:40 p.m.) vs. the Athletics. 
As for pricing:
• There will be 116 commemorative bats, representing each victory from the 116-win season. They can be purchased for $1,000.
• There will be more than 2,000 baseball medallions available to purchase for $250.
Fans that purchase a commemorative bat or baseball medallion can personalize it with a custom message, “allowing fans to leave their mark at T-Mobile Park forever.”  
The bats and medallions went on sale to Mariners Season Ticket Members on Wednesday and will open to the public at 9 a.m. on Thursday. 

I’ve been reading through the horror stories about people getting left without tickets for the World Cup matches and want to do something to help out. I have connections to local consumer investigative reporters in a bunch of the major host cities. They are interested in doing a segment on this and reporting how the secondary market is treating fans during the World Cup. This type of coverage is key to local television news, especially in host cities. The news moves fast, and reporters looking to get stories on the air quickly.

Here is what I need to know from you:

1. Are you willing to be interviewed on camera for this story? Most likely over a video call.
2. Do you have the receipts showing you bought tickets and they were not delivered, or that you were still not able to attend the event?
3. Have you been in contact with customer service? What was the resolution? Do you have screenshots of your interaction with customer service?

Even if you live in a different city, if your match was in a host city like Dallas, LA, Atlanta, etc., I can likely connect you with a reporter there who is interested in the story. Please drop a comment or send me a direct message if you'd like to tell your story.

Thanks to Bret McCormick at Sports Business Journal for the following story.

The Crew are launching a new season ticket membership program called The C96, ahead of the MLS club’s July season ticket renewal window.

The C96 provides new perks for season ticket members, including $5 hot dogs, popcorn, and bottled soft drinks, and $3 coffee and hot chocolate at ScottsMiracle-Gro Field. C96 members will also receive a refillable/reusable season ticket member water bottle that they can use inside the stadium, and discounts for children’s camps and clinics.

Additionally, the club’s season ticket member program now includes tiers based on tenure -- Black (1-2 years), Gold (3-8 years), and Legacy (9-plus years).

“We’ve heard from people over the years that we don’t have enough benefits and value for those that have been through it all,” Crew VP/Ticket Sales & Service Adam Green said. The C96 is “incentivizing and rewarding our longest, most passionate members. The longer you’re a member, the more benefits you’re going to get.”

The changes come ahead of MLS’ calendar shift from a largely summer-based season to one that mirrors the global soccer calendar, running from August to the following May. MLS will have a short “sprint” season in the first half of 2027, before switching to the new full season later that year.

Understanding of the short season and the switch to the global soccer calendar was “really high” among Crew fans, said Green, which took pressure off the team to explain the situation.

“We weren’t necessarily nervous but I wasn’t sure what the vibes would be around the short season,” Green said.

The Crew is one of few MLS teams selling the sprint season and subsequent full season separately, with the lone catch that all fans buying season ticket packages are auto-renewed for the next season, unless they opt out. Most MLS clubs are selling one-and-a-half season packages only.

The new season ticket member program’s added perks don’t directly impact pricing for the 2027 sprint season or full 2027-28 season, which will be shared with fans when the renewal window opens in July.

Green wouldn’t disclose the club’s season ticket member numbers but said they’ve been sold out the past few seasons. He clarified that there isn’t a cliff of renewals that the Crew are facing in their soon-to-be five-year-old stadium. The only products sold on contract at ScottsMiracle-Gro Field are suites; season ticket deals are all year-to-year.

This article from Sports Business Journal raised some interesting questions about the future of season tickets and gameday concessions, along with some insight into teams food-and-beverage operations. Would you like if your team included concessions with season tickets? Based on this article, it might make sense for some stadiums, but not all.

Article by Bret McCormick:

The price of admission for 200,000 fans this month at the PGA Championship included food and nonalcoholic drinks, enabling fans to grab a bite, a drink and whisk back to the golf course in minutes.

Earlier this spring, 75,000 premium patrons had a similar experience at the Kentucky Derby, except their tickets included higher-end food and alcohol.

Coastal Carolina University offers up to 21,000 fans food included with admission at home football games. And 44,000 San Francisco 49ers fans — about 64% of Levi’s Stadium’s 68,500 capacity — consume food and beverages included with their season tickets.

All-inclusive tickets, historically the domain of Disney cruises or Caribbean resorts, are creeping into sports venues. So far, that’s mostly happening in premium spaces. But what if all-inclusive wasn’t limited to the upper crust, and every ticket in a stadium or arena included at least some food and drinks in the price?

It’s “my utopian dream,” said Aramark Sports + Entertainment President and CEO Alison Birdwell, “to get the full experience and not worry about the cost.”

The effortless flow of the PGA Championship’s all-inclusive markets belies the multiyear, behind-the-scenes business shifts needed to make an all-inclusive-for-all F&B experience work.

Deployed in a stadium or arena setting, it would upend a century-old system of paid concessions, revolutionizing in-venue fan experience while automatically increasing upfront ticket prices. Food and beverage providers would get greater cost certainty, but fans would get less agency in shaping their experience; what if they didn’t want to eat at the game?

Teams would no longer be selling food and drink one transaction at a time. They would be baking that value into the ticket, fundamentally altering two of their biggest game-day revenue streams: ticketing, which can easily reach nine figures annually; and F&B, which can range from $20 million to more than $100 million. It would also take aim at one of fans’ most common affordability complaints.

F&B consultant Jonathan Harris describes it as “the innovation of innovations.” Frictionless technologies, like self-checkout markets, are hot topics, but the “innovation is going to be how you get people to feel really good about the food and beverage experience, which just suffers immensely when you’re selling $20 beers.”

Going to all-inclusive-for-all would require an organizationwide commitment: the right venue infrastructure; precise financial, procurement, and production forecasting; and total collaboration between venue operators and their F&B providers.

The financial argument rests on three main assumptions: no-shows subsidize the system, ancillary game-day spending increases and sponsors can underwrite the program.

But those forecasts could not be missed. The reputational and business damage from running out of concessions at a game, or from having to pull back the all-inclusive-for-all offering due to a long-term miscalculation, might take years to repair.

“When you do something like this, it’s really hard to peel it back,” said a pro sports executive who has studied the topic. “It’s a decision you’d be making for the life of your building.”

If a venue operator can stomach the risks, the conditions are increasingly ripe to take the leap. The sports industry is already moving in many of the necessary directions to bring all-inclusive-for-all to life in a venue. And teams and municipalities are designing dozens of stadiums and arenas, any of which could become the concept’s ideal blank slate.

“Does it truly drive a better experience and sell tickets?” said Tom Funk, Legends Global president of hospitality. “As we get better data and connect the dots, I think at some point, sooner than later, it’s going to happen.”

Fan experience scores from PGA of America events were in the low 70s before Delaware North and its subsidiary Patina took over the organization’s F&B business in 2021 and converted it to all-inclusive. The average score last year was a 96. Jeff Rosenthal, Delaware North Sportservice head of growth, thinks the same impact can be realized in a stadium or arena.

“To me, somebody is going to create a legacy and redefine what frictionless is,” he said. “And that is going to be done by moving to an all-inclusive experience for general guests. It’s the future, in my opinion, of how we’re going to experience sports.”

The organizational lift

The 49ers’ primary motivation for launching their Member Inclusive Menu program for season-ticket holders in 2021 was to enhance the value of season tickets. It’s why the team doesn’t allow the Member Inclusive benefit to transfer when a season-ticket member resells any of their tickets.

“Can all stadiums be all-inclusive? I think operationally and technically, yes,” said Alison Lu, 49ers vice president of business strategy and analytics. “But it depends; what’s your goal?”

Member Inclusive brainstorming meetings were crowded.

Public relations, marketing and communications teams would have to explain the change to fans, what was on the Member Inclusive Menu, who could access it and how. The guest services team would need to educate season-ticket members on their Member Inclusive benefit.

The ticket sales team was present to consider how to sell more expensive tickets, while the sponsorship team grappled with how sponsors could help support the program financially. The operations teams, including Levi’s Stadium concessionaire, Levy, were front and center for obvious reasons.

Oh, and “legal … finance … have I named all the departments in our organization?” Lu asked, laughing.

The all-inclusive-for-all menu needs defining; the 49ers’ includes stadium basics, like hot dogs, pretzels, peanuts, sodas, chicken tenders and fries. Would alcohol be included? At Levi’s Stadium, no; at the Kentucky Derby, with far fewer children in attendance, the answer is yes.

How would general admission and premium experiences be differentiated when everyone’s ticket is all-inclusive? Any multiyear ticket price would need a built-in price escalator, accounting for annual inflation and food and labor cost increases. Otherwise, a team’s $90 yield from a $100 ticket, for example, could quickly become an $80 yield.

All-inclusive-for-all shifted Patina from a PGA of America service provider to more of a partner, investing alongside its client in the financials, staffing and equipment.

“If you make this change happen, you and your client are truly aligned,” said Oak View Group Hospitality President Ken Gaber. “Because the only way it would happen is if you’re truly aligned.”

Even then, significant hurdles remain. Spend 10 minutes discussing this topic with a sports or F&B executive and unintended consequences spill forth:

• Would F&B revenue move into the ticketing department’s portion of the profit and loss statement?
• Would all-inclusive-for-all be feasible in multi-tenant buildings?
• What about non-tenant events, like concerts?
• Would it cause teams to cut back the number of tickets they donate to charity or schools?

“When you now have a per-head cost on every person that comes into the building, it’s going to cost you money to be charitable,” said Matthew Jafarian, executive vice president of business strategy for 601 Analytics and the Miami Heat.

There is also a widely held assumption that an all-inclusive-for-all program would diminish food quality and variety. Would marketing shift from highlighting the diversity of food and drink to highlighting the ease of experience and frictionless nature?

“That’s where the sticking point comes in,” said Kate Thomson, Sodexo Live vice president of marketing. “You have probably too many types of personas coming in that are looking for different things.”

Making the math work

Whether an emphasis on ease-of-experience over F&B variety sparks increased ticket sales and return visitors, especially in pro leagues with higher numbers of games and single-game ticket buyers (MLB, NBA and NHL), hasn’t been tested yet.

“Within our businesses we continue to see growth on the food and beverage side,” said the pro sports executive. “Moving to a model like this is, I think, risky towards that model.”

A cornerstone of this idea’s financial viability, in the view of Delaware North’s Rosenthal, is no-shows subsidizing the program.

Currently, fans who buy tickets but don’t attend the event contribute nothing to the F&B business’ bottom line, because they aren’t on-site to buy anything. In an all-inclusive-for-all setup, every ticket buyer who doesn’t show up contributes to the program’s profitability by not consuming what they’ve already paid for. In a perverse way, if an all-inclusive-for-all team has a terrible season that drags down attendance, the team might make more money in the short-term.

“There is breakage in there that the operators can leverage,” said the pro sports executive. “But is it the best thing for the consumer? I don’t know.”

The concept’s financial viability is already being proved in less quirky ways.

When Coastal Carolina Athletic Director Chance Miller arrived at the university in June 2024, its football season-ticket renewal rate was about 64%. After launching the free food initiative in 2025, it jumped to 90%. Miller didn’t need it to be hugely profitable because it generates repeat visitors and positive brand awareness.

“When people don’t have to come in and feel like they’re being nickel-and-dimed the whole time, they enjoy it a little bit more,” he said.

With a set per-cap (the dollar amount of concessions the average fan buys during a game) already included with each ticket, all-inclusive-for-all could still be a moneymaker.

The PGA of America’s program is a “profit center for us, certainly,” said Brandon Haney, PGA of America director of tournament operations, while Sarah Contardo, Churchill Downs senior vice president of sales and strategy, said that in terms of revenue tied to the profit and loss statement, the Derby’s large-scale all-inclusive program (launched in 2021) is financially “pretty neutral.”

“Long run, we’re making money,” she said. “People are having a great time at our event, which makes them want to come back.”

With fans not paying for concessions on game days, ancillary in-venue spending grows, whether alcohol (when it’s not included) or merchandise. The Kentucky Derby’s merch sales rose 84% from 2019 to 2025, though a new merchandise strategy and product mix begun in 2023 contributed, and wagering at Churchill Downs has risen, too. Rosenthal said that, depending on the building type, he’d expect stadium or arena per-caps to grow 2.5 to 4 times.

The 49ers’ Ticketmaster sponsorship of the Member Inclusive Menu is another route to make the all-inclusive-for-all math work. With higher consumption, the PGA of America has more purchasing power with Sysco and U.S. Foods, opening the door to sponsorship opportunities, including with Pepsi.

It’s easy to imagine a tech company being interested in becoming “the official engine powering” the concept. That kind of sponsorship could dovetail with the detailed forecasting required to effectively predict product needs and avoid waste.

“At the 49ers, we’re almost down to the item level at this point,” said Levy Chief Commercial Officer Sandeep Satish. “We know exactly what we’ll sell, what people will consume, when they’ll do it and we can project it to a T.”

Is the building ready?

Seemingly every new premium space in college and pro sports venues features all-inclusive F&B, so the changes are already being tested on a smaller scale. But, Birdwell said, “How do you take it to the next step?”

Ahead of the 49ers’ implementation of the Member Inclusive program, Levy and the team analyzed every stand at Levi’s Stadium to determine what sort of staffing, equipment and space would be required to cope with a “Black Swan” food service event, in which every attendee ate the maximum amount possible. Since Member Inclusive’s launch, overall concessions transactions increased 40% on the main concourse, while the average checkout basket size climbed roughly 61%, from 2.25 items to 3.6 items per basket.

Could a stadium or arena’s back-of-house and fan-facing infrastructure handle the increased production and consumption? That’s an especially daunting question for older college sports venues.

“If you can’t keep up with the volume, then it’s not a good value,” said Oak View’s Gaber.

The ideal test case would be a new stadium or arena designed from scratch around all-inclusive-for-all. Central kitchens would need to be larger, with more satellite kitchens, storage commissaries and back-loadable coolers scattered throughout the venue. Venue blueprints would have more gas lines, drainage and power.

“Most stands need to be able to cook food, and that’s not always the case at a lot of these facilities,” Harris said. “And that means more hood systems, which means more health permits, which means … it’s insane the trickle-down effect.”

Concourse and grab-and-go market configurations would be redesigned to accommodate the flow of fans and prevent crowding. The Levi’s Stadium consumption surge created lines that the 49ers are still working to reduce, whether through line-busters (people who take queued fans’ order on a tablet, like at Chick-fil-A’s drive-thru), limiting each Member Inclusive recipient to four items per visit or Member Inclusive-exclusive lines.

With the right infrastructure, the elimination of transactions and all they entail — the fumbling with a phone, finding a loyalty membership, digging a credit card out of the wallet, ringing up the order — would be another huge step toward the ultimate frictionless live sports experience.

Since 2021, 49ers fans’ overall F&B satisfaction has increased 9%, while satisfaction specifically with the Member Inclusive program is 20% higher. At the Kentucky Derby, all-inclusive ticket holders are greeted by servers bearing Mint Juleps and bowls of M&M’s. The elevated service and attention helped post-Derby NPS scores rise 17% since 2019.

“We didn’t reduce staffing at all. Everybody who was dealing with money just became customer focused,” said Contardo. “It became a more personal interaction versus transactional.”

Concessions By the Numbers

https://preview.redd.it/sajbam83wj3h1.png?width=1093&format=png&auto=webp&s=a615caecbd76248a173b1bf37c0eda83371bf899

Inclusive psychology

That idyllic guest-centered, seamless fan experience is one of the biggest reasons the industry is entertaining all the associated headaches and complications.

To get there, suddenly higher ticket prices would need a clear explanation.

If a hypothetical MLB team needed to cover a $30 per-cap over 81 home games, an additional $2,430 would have to be tacked on to a season ticket (for reference, the publicly traded Atlanta Braves sold 1.9 million tickets in 2025). Ticket salespeople would need to be equipped to explain the short-term and longer-term cost increases without a real precedent to point toward.

After Churchill Downs launched its widespread all-inclusive program, two-day Kentucky Derby ticket prices went up roughly $300, an increase of between 13% and 23% for the premium seats that didn’t already have the benefit. The 49ers’ season-ticket prices increased by an average of 13%.

It’s not a given that fans would pay such a significant upfront increase. And some may resist being forced to pay for stadium food that they might not have otherwise bought.

Fifty-six percent of respondents to a CivicScience survey conducted on behalf of SBJ said they think a lot about F&B prices when deciding whether to attend a game. It isn’t totally clear if an all-inclusive venue would make live sports attendance more affordable, but it could make it more feasible by providing families with cost certainty ahead of game day, enabling them to better budget their experience.

That’s one of the concept’s higher goals, to dissipate the spending stress that looms over a day at the ballpark with family.

Rosenthal described ticket buying’s psychological cycle, in which a fan is most excited the moment they buy their tickets. Then they get the bill and the excitement is dinged. Then they attend the event days, weeks or months later, “and each time you have to pay $5 to $7 dollars for a water, pay for a $6 to $9 hot dog, creates a negative friction point in your mind,” Rosenthal said.

“We are minimizing that,” he added. “You make your purchase, it includes your whole experience, you get that elation and you have that one down time” when you get billed, “months and months prior to the event.”

Unaware fans arriving at the PGA Championship or Kentucky Derby during the last few years have regularly been shocked to learn that food and drink were included with their ticket.

Venue operators deciding to offer food and beverage with every ticket would bank on that powerful feeling — freedom from being nickel-and-dimed — never wearing off. The gamble is whether that feeling justifies rewiring a hundred years of established business.

Ethan Joyce contributed reporting to this story.

Included concessions? Not at a higher price

Half of U.S. adults surveyed last week by CivicScience for SBJ said they are “not at all willing” to pay extra for a ticket that includes food and non-alcoholic beverages, highlighting fans’ resistance to higher upfront prices.

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When I started r/seasontickets, I wanted a place where real fans could talk about the lifestyle of owning season tickets. It is a community for sharing season ticket gifts, discussing your renewals, posting pictures from the game, and connecting with other season ticket holders (even from rivals). I know some of you get frustrated with Rule 2 (No Ticket Sales or Trades), but I’m doubling down on it for a reason.

For the last five months, I have been tracking a very specific scam that has been targeting Redditors. This is not a one off on Reddit, and it is a problem across social media. I recently sat down with First Alert 4 to discuss this sophisticated ticketing scam.

The scammer(s) posts tickets for sale in regional groups with an emotional hook to build trust. They avoid listing a price publicly and ask interested buyers to send a DM. They offer a deal that feels just "generous" enough to be believable, and then only accept unprotected payment methods like Venmo, CashApp, or ApplePay.

The most believable part of this scam? They are not just sending lazy photoshopped screenshots. After reviewing detailed pictures from victims, I am convinced the scammer(s) is using a cloned Ticketmaster app. It is a bogus system that looks and feels like the real thing, but the tickets are fake.

Most people only see one scam in their local market. I have seen this happen across multiple cities, states, and with the same pattern over and over. They have a working playbook.

KMOV First Alert 4 Reddit Ticket Scam Story

Same Scam, Different City

I’ve tracked this same scam across multiple fanbases. If you look at these threads, you’ll see the exact patterns I’m talking about.

Colorado Avalanche Ticket Scam

Duke Basketball Ticket Scam

Phoenix Suns Ticket Scam

Los Angeles Lakers Ticket Scam

San Francisco Giants Ticket Scam

What to do if Scammed:

Scammers are savvy, and hindsight is 20/20. If you fell for this scam, do not feel ashamed. Coming forward helps protect the next person.

1. Document any screenshots, text messages, aliases, and payment information.
2. Report the scam to your State Attorney General. It might seem like a big escalation, but this will be the best local contact to investigate.
3. Contact your bank or payment provider. The payment might be tough to get back, but the fraud report is still essential to your case.
4. Notify the mods, or post about it to the community. This step helps to make sure others are warned and the account is banned.

To be clear, discussing ticket resale is not discouraged. Whether you're curious about team policies and exchanges, wondering how to price your seats, or looking for advice. That’s all part of what this sub is for.

Rule 2 isn't there to be restrictive. It’s there to keep the scammers out and the focus on season tickets.