Kansas City Royals Release Full 2008 MLB Schedule and Home Baseball Ticket Pricing

10/23/2007, KANSAS CITY -- The Kansas City Royals today announced their entire 2008 regular season schedule, as well as their ticket pricing for the upcoming season. The 162-game slate will begin on Monday, March 31 in Detroit, kicking off a six-game road trip that concludes with a three-game visit to Minnesota. As previously announced, the Royals will open the home half of the '08 campaign on Tuesday, April 8 against the New York Yankees, the first of a 3-game set.

The 2008 slate is once again highlighted by a six-game, home-and-home series against cross-state rival St. Louis, with the Royals traveling to Busch Stadium on June 16-18, then the Redbirds visiting Kauffman Stadium on June 27-29.

Other interleague work will include visits to the "K" by the San Francisco Giants (June 20-22) and the newly-crowned National League champion Colorado Rockies (June 24-26). Including the trip to St. Louis, KC's other road work against the National League will feature the club's first-ever visit to Dolphin Stadium for a three-game set against the Florida Marlins (May 16-18) and a June 13-15 stop in the desert to battle the N.L. West champion Arizona Diamondbacks in Chase Field.

Kansas City's longest journey of the year is an 11-game tour of Florida (3), Boston (4) and Toronto (4) from May 16-26. The Royals have a pair of 10-game homestands, the first from May 5-14, featuring visits from the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (3), Baltimore Orioles (4) and Detroit Tigers (3). The other runs from August 1-10, with the White Sox (3), Red Sox (4) and Twins (3) visiting Kauffman Stadium.

The Royals will play only one holiday home game, hosting Baltimore on Mother's Day (May 11), while playing on the road in Arizona for Father's Day (June 15) and in Tampa Bay on the 4th of July.

The game dates are still subject to change, while game times will be announced at a later date.

In addition, the Royals today announced ticket pricing for the 2008 season. The Royals will raise their average ticket price for single-game purchases to $23.76 per ticket, a 14.94% increase over the $20.67 figure in 2007 (excluding Premium games). Ticket prices for season-seat holders will increase to $16.62 per seat, a 14.93% rise over the $14.46 per season-seat charged in '07. Despite the increases, the new ticketing price structure still ranks 27th among the 30 Major League clubs, based on 2007 pricing. The average price per season ticket in Major League Baseball for 2007 was $22.69.

"The new pricing structure comes from an immense amount of research involving where our ticket prices rank compared to the market size and where we want to be as an organization both on and off the field in the coming years," said Kevin Uhlich, Royals Senior Vice President of Business Operations. "Obviously we want to keep our prices reasonable for our fans and I feel that despite the increase in ticket cost, Royals baseball is still one of the best bargains in professional sports.

"With the renovations that have begun and the new pricing structure, we are committed to providing a well-rounded, exciting experience once fans enter the gates at Kauffman Stadium," Uhlich continued. "This includes a reinvestment of the revenue from ticket sales into baseball operations with the intent to upgrade our efforts in the minor leagues, internationally and on the Major League level."

For 2008, over 36% of the stadium capacity will be priced at $15.00 or less (14,700 tickets). Season Ticket holders will experience the best value as a benefit to those who buy full-season, 41-game or 21-game plans. The savings will be at least 20% over single-game prices in some areas and as much as 30% in others. All Upper Level seats (View Box, View Infield, Hy-Vee Box and Hy-Vee View Level) have experienced the lowest increase, including View Infield, which had no increase to Season Ticket holders.

Returning on the View Level will be the popular "Buy 2, Get 2" season ticket plan, which offers View Box seats for only $7.00 per ticket. Lower Bowl seats have undergone an overall $3 to $5 per-seat increase for Season Ticket holders. For single-game purchasers, the Royals will have Premium Game pricing for 10 games in 2008. The Premium Game prices will include a $7.00 increase on Lower Bowl and Club Box seats, and a reduction to $5.00 per game increase in the View Level. The Premium Game schedule for 2008 includes the home schedule opening three games on April 8-10 against the Yankees, the three-game interleague series on June 27-29 vs. St. Louis and the four-game visit from Boston on August 4-7.

Also returning in 2008 will be the "Friends and Family" package, which will including four tickets, four hotdogs, 4 Pepsis, peanuts or popcorn and a Gameday magazine for $44.00.

Source: MLB

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