Cubs in Tokyo: High prices — and firm resale laws — don’t stop fans’ once-in-a-lifetime experience
TOKYO — Tickets to the Tokyo Series were a hot commodity with baseball fans in both Japan and the United States attempting to score seats for the opening games of the 2025 big-league season.
The scarcity of inventory — and firm resale laws in Japan — caused any secondary tickets to skyrocket in the lead-up to Tuesday’s opening-day matchup between the Chicago Cubs and Los Angeles Dodgers at the Tokyo Dome. Twenty-five years ago, the Cubs were part of Major League Baseball history when they played in the first games outside of North America, beginning the season in the same ballpark against the New York Mets.
When the Tokyo Series was announced in July 2024, Cubs fans started eyeing the trip.
Jessica Carroll, 34, and Salman Mamdani, 43, centered their entire 10-day trip to Japan around the Tokyo Series, taking off work and booking flights weeks ago despite not securing tickets to Wednesday’s finale until five days before the game. Getting to be part of a special series was an opportunity Carroll and Mamdani couldn’t pass up, ultimately paying more for tickets for Game 2 of the series than they spent to go to Game 5 of the 2016 World Series at Wrigley Field. The pair also tried to get tickets to the opener, but prices didn’t come down enough.
“We’ve been going opening days for nine, 10 years,” Mamdani said. “We want to build a memory.”
“We couldn’t break tradition and not come,” Carroll added. “I feel like the whole preseason has been really electric, everyone’s really amped up for this year, and so we’re excited.”
They weren’t alone in committing to making the trek to Japan without tickets in hand.
Drew Benson, 36, and Bryan Gengler, 36, of Coal City, Ill., bought tickets to Tuesday’s game for $1,500 each approximately four hours before first pitch. Benson, a Cubs season-ticket holder since 2014, struck out in the team’s lottery. And Gengler’s friend in Japan tried to get them tickets through the Japanese lottery, but also came up short. Benson and Gengler were able to go to the Cubs’ Saturday exhibition game against the Hanshin Tigers and soaked in the unique environment with the chanting and cheering.
“We just were like, ‘We’re not gonna pass up this opportunity,'” Benson said. “We committed from the day that they announced whether we can get tickets or not.”
Eduardo Guzman, 47, and Natalia Colon Guzman, 45, of Fulton, Md., planned to make the trip in November and finally got tickets five days before the series finale. Neither had visited Japan before, and two days into the trip, both have been blown away by the experience.
Guzman estimated he paid close to what he and his father spent on tickets to Game 5 of the World Series. He grew up a Cubs fan in Puerto Rico from watching the Cubs on WGN.
“He’s a serious fan, that’s why we’re here,” Colon Guzman said.
“We planned the trip to come to Japan, airfare, hotel, with a false sense of confidence that we’ll be able to get tickets,” Guzman said. “But we found them. We paid more than I wanted to pay for, but we were already on our way here and I don’t know when they’re going to play here again.”
Melanie Balanon, 28, of Chicago, called the process to get tickets for the two games “pure luck.” Balanon, who has a half-season plan for four Cubs tickets, was part of the presale lottery sale and purchased tickets for both games against the Dodgers.
“I’m just very grateful to be here,” Balanon said. “It’s been unreal, so amazing and happy to be here in Tokyo. It’s so nice to see Cubs fans and see a part of home, but definitely it’s exciting for the Dodgers. Even as a Cubs fan, I still respect Shohei (Ohtani). I love this for him. I can’t even imagine what it must be like for him and the Japanese players.”
Balanon, a nurse at Lurie Children’s Hospital, attended the Tokyo Series with her nursing colleagues Jennifer Fortson, 50, and Sebastian Fortson, 23, of Homewood, Ill. She remembers Fortson showing up to Lurie one day a few months ago in a Cubs jacket talking about how she was going to Tokyo with her son for the games. Balanon hadn’t booked anything yet and couldn’t find anyone else who wanted to go.
“But I already felt like I was missing out just by her talking,” Balanon recalled. “So I said, OK, let me just try for the lottery, and if anything, at least I’ll have a fun trip to Tokyo. And it worked out.”
Jennifer appreciates how welcoming the country has been and the passion from Japanese baseball fans. The difference in how the stadium environments stood out in the opener. The predominately Japanese crowd is often quiet during at-bats, a level of respect that can contrast the sometimes raucous Wrigley Field, particularly in the bleachers.
“It was different, which is so neat to experience this in a different culture,” said Jennifer, a Cubs season-ticket holder since 2013 who went to the London Series in 2013 with her son and has been to 19 MLB ballparks.
The lack of Cubs merchandise in the MLB store outside the Tokyo Dome and around the city — compared to an overwhelming amount of Dodgers and Ohtani-related gear — has stood out to Chicago supporters. After seeing the paltry offerings, Colon Guzman was glad they bought Cubs-themed Tokyo Series merchandise before coming to Japan.
“We know Cubs fans travel and we get Ohtani is a big thing, but I was actually really shocked to find it was really hard to find Cubs gear,” Jennifer said. “We did a lot of divide and conquer.”
For the Cubs fans who made the trip, a positive outlook for the season played a role in their decisions to travel overseas. Benson described himself as cautiously optimistic about the Cubs’ chances this year, though he doesn’t expect them to spend to keep impending free-agent star Kyle Tucker beyond the season.
Mamdani is confident the Cubs will reach the playoffs, where anything goes. Some fans understandably need to see the team come through before fully buying in as the Cubs look to get back to the postseason for the first time since 2020. There’s plenty of work to be done for the Cubs, who were swept by the Dodgers in the 2-game series in Tokyo.
“If you’re a Cubs fan, you never go all in,” Guzman said. “Doesn’t matter they won the World Series. You have to still have that sense of being uneasy about it. I don’t like the fact that they’re the favorites to win the division, I don’t like that at all. Makes me very nervous.”
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