Opening Day has come and gone and America’s favorite pastime is back in full swing. If you ask us, beer and baseball go together like peanut butter and jelly –– but unlike the budget breakfast staple, enjoying a beer can cost nearly $12, unless your favorite team happens to play at a select few stadiums across the country.
The variety in price is shocking: At the Colorado Rockies’ Coors Field, the nation’s cheapest stadium for brews, fans have to pay just $3, and at Chase Stadium, lovers of the Arizona Diamondbacks need only shell out $4. Meanwhile, Mets and Orioles fans watch the game at the two most expensive stadiums for beer in the nation, and therefore end up needing to pay $11.75 and $10.00 for a small brew, respectively. Ultimately, when it comes to grabbing beers during the game, relative size matters: Visitors to Boston’s Fenway Park can get their hands on a 12-ounce beer for $8.50 (far from being the nation’s priciest), but look closer, and you’ll notice that the park really charges the most expensive price — a whopping 71 cents — for beer by the ounce.
Fan cost index (FCI) increased by $9.75 for a family of four in 2021 — a 4.5 percent gain over the previous year that was led predominantly by increasing beer prices. Last year, the average small beer commanded $6.72 versus just $6.16 the previous year — a 9.1 percent increase that marks the largest year-over-year gain in 20 years.
We’ve broken down the price of the least expensive beer, along with the average beer price per ounce of the cheapest beer, at every baseball stadium in Major League Baseball. Read on for all the sudsy details.