Luxury Seating Highlights $30 million Renovations to Comerica Park

Comerica Park in downtown Detroit first opened in 2000 – nearly a quarter-century ago.

The Detroit Tigers wanted to spice up the 41,083-season stadium by investing nearly $30 million into the park for a better fan experience. The improvements included a massive new videoboard – the second largest in Major League Baseball behind the New York Mets – new TVs throughout the concourse and audio improvements.

However, the most noticeable improvements to the ballpark are the luxury seats behind home plate that are appropriately called Home Plate Club seats. The 350 high-end leather seats, which are robin’s egg blue, feature a headrest embossed with the Old English D, as well as heating and cooling capabilities – a first for a Major League Baseball team. The seats were made in Barcelona, Spain, and the heating/cooling elements were designed by a company in Traverse City. The seats are 21 percent wider than an average ballpark seat and has more leg room.

If you’ve ever watched a Los Angeles Dodgers home game on television, they are the plush seats located behind home plate that television personality Mary Hart has season tickets for. The Tigers were one of the last teams in the Major Leagues to add high-end seating options for fans.

Ticket holders are provided private parking, a private ballpark entrance, and all-inclusive food and beverage options (including booze). The area behind home plate previously had a double-set of doors with plexiglass that the umpires used to traverse the field. 

Pretty nice, right? 

The only problem is the average fan isn’t going to be able to afford to sit there. The seats in the Home Plate Club can only be purchased in quarter, half or full season ticket packages with prices ranging from around $10,000 to $40,000 per ticket depending on the row.

Since only the wealthy can afford them, you can imagine there are a number of empty seats – plenty of empty seats which isn’t a good look on the Bengals’ television broadcasts. When you can’t fill those seats even on Opening Day – which is a Michigan holiday – the whole optics is bad.

The club should actually consider selling a certain number of them as single tickets (vs. season tickets), or donate them to local non-profit organizations as fundraisers. Or, if season-ticket holders don’t show up by the third inning, let the average fan move down there.

Unique keyhole disappears

Another noticeable change to Comerica Park is the disappearance of the keyhole – the path from home plate to the pitcher’s mound. Back in the day every Major League ballpark had a keyhole, and one-by-one they’ve been removed.

Comerica Park was the very last Major League baseball park to have a keyhole.

It was unique to baseball and unique to Comerica Park. Now it is no longer. Even though the Comerica Park grounds crew keep it manicured, it was actually the Detroit Tiger players who asked management to get rid of it.

Bottom of Form