Photo of the seats at Great American Ball Park. Home of the Cincinnati Reds. 

Image Credit: Matt Turner (CC BY 2.0)

Not since 1988 has the city of Cincinnati, Ohio hosted the MLB All-Star Game. At the time, the game was played at the former home of the Cincinnati Reds, Riverfront Stadium. 12 years after the opening of Great American Ball Park (2003), the organization is gearing up for this year's "Midsummer Classic". The first order of business; replacing the old seats with brand new ones. 

Residents of Hamilton County were stuck with the bill of both Paul Brown Stadium (Cincinnati Bengals) and Great American Ball Park when a half cent tax increase was implemented. With that said, guess who gets to pay for the installation of all 38,000 new seats into the ballpark? The taxpayers of Hamilton County. Says so in the lease. 

Thankfully, Hamilton county has decided to give the bid for the production of the new seats to locally owned Borke Mold Specialists in nearby West Chester, Ohio. After being quoted $5 million from another company originally, the city had few options and had to find a cheaper alternative. Borke Mold Specialists molded and installed a small number of seats in 2014 and implemented a series of tests to the new seats. The old seats started to show wear and tear during the 2008 campaign, after just five seasons.  Most of the old seats at Great American Ball Park will be recycled and that money will go towards the installation of the new seats. Progress is going according to schedule while the remaining thousands of seats  hopefully will be installed by Opening Day in April. Local inmates will be the ones providing labor for each seat's installation. The new seats are believed to be sturdier with better design.

Photo of the seats at a nearly empty Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati, Ohio. Home of the Cincinnati Reds.

Image Credit: Redlegsfan21/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Policy for Buying Tickets to the 2015 Major League Baseball All Star Game

The Cincinnati Reds organization is requiring season ticket holders to purchase the entire 2015 All-Star package which includes tickets to the All-Star Game, the Home Run Derby, the All-Star Fan Fest and the All-Star Game official program. Those that are full and half season ticket holders will get first dibs on All-Star Tickets. How many tickets they're allowed to purchase depends on how long they've been a season ticket holder and the number of seats in their regular season ticket plan. Any remaining All-Star packages will be made available to the ticket holders that have purchased 20 game packages. 

After speaking with representatives from 333 Seat, the city's number one ticket broker, they insisted that the average fan would be better off buying their All-Star Game tickets from a Secondary ticket broker. Buying season tickets and obligating yourself to go to every home game or get rid of tickets to games you can't attend would be a huge hassle. Especially if all you had in mind was to purchase All-Star Game tickets at face value. Websites like Stubhub, Ticket Monster and TiqIQ will all offer tickets at an inflated rate but with no hassle. All-Star game tickets for the upper level of Great American Ball Park are going to run in the $300 per ticket range come July. 

 

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