Red Sox season ticket holders don't even have their tickets for next year yet, but many are already reselling their seats at astronomical prices.
Websites like StubHub.com, Aceticket.com, and Ticketliquidator.com are carrying hundreds of tickets to 2008 Red Sox games, most of them coming from season ticket holders eager to recoup a portion or all of the cost of purchasing the tickets, which are the most expensive in the league.
StubHub, the online marketplace for ticket buyers and sellers owned by eBay Inc., says its hottest-selling Major League Baseball ticket is for the Red Sox home opener against the Detroit Tigers on April 8 when the team is expected to hoist its World Series championship banner and hand out championship rings to the players.
A StubHub spokeswoman declined to say how many tickets for the home opener have already been sold on the website, but she said the average selling price was $728. She said prices have ranged from $334 for a bleacher seat with a face value of $26 to $2,683 for a field box seat with a face value of $125.
StubHub even has a Red Sox season ticket for sale. The right field box seat at Fenway Park, with a face value of roughly $4,000 for all 81 home games, is currently on sale for $14,500.
One season ticket holder, who asked not to be identified because she fears the team might revoke her season tickets, said season ticket holders are posting tickets for sale now because buyers want them now.
"Red Sox tickets make great Christmas gifts, but the truth is that companies are buying many of them. They're the only ones that can afford them," she said.
Another season ticket holder, who asked not to be identified for the same reason, said he can typically resell a handful of his game tickets and recoup the entire cost of his season tickets. "The money is just too good to pass up," he said.
Red Sox officials, who this month raised prices for most of the 2008 tickets by 9 percent, declined to comment. The team is planning a Christmas at Fenway single-game ticket sale on Dec. 8. (The New York Times Co., which owns The Boston Globe, holds a 17 percent stake in the Red Sox.)
The team officially prohibits season ticket holders from reselling their tickets, but it's unclear how aggressive the Red Sox are in enforcing that policy.
Major League Baseball is entering into a partnership with StubHub for the 2008 season, making the San Francisco-based ticket reseller the official secondary ticket marketplace for each professional baseball team.
The Red Sox haven't commented yet on how the team will deal with StubHub. Massachusetts law currently bars ticket resellers from charging more than $2 above a ticket's face value plus certain service and business charges. The law is rarely enforced, except against people selling tickets on the street.
The Massachusetts House this year passed a bill that would remove the resale price cap, but the bill stalled in the Senate.
James Holzman, the president of AceTicket.com, said he was disappointed the Legislature did not pass the bill. He said Massachusetts is one of only five states with laws restricting how much a ticket can be resold for.
Colman Herman, a Dorchester consumer activist, said the law should be changed but only to allow ticket markups of 1.5 to 2 times face value.
Right now, Herman said, everyone is cashing in on the popularity of the Red Sox.
He said the team has raised prices, season ticket holders are reselling their tickets at high prices, and resellers are making huge profits. He said a lawsuit he filed against a Weymouth ticket reseller revealed the reseller's 2005 profit was $275,000.
"What chance does the little guy have?" Herman asked. "The greed is appalling."
Bruce Mohl can be reached at mohl@globe.com.
