Tom Krasovic: Season-ticket sales prove Padres fans are hungry for a title

Never mind that the Padres exited fast from the playoffs three months ago and that their offseason hasn’t sizzled.

The team said Wednesday it has sold all of its season tickets for 2026, making it four straight years of such sellouts.

The Padres declined to say how many ducats were sold. But the total is said to have blown away last year’s number.

For sure, the Padres stand among the major league leaders in season ticket sales. Just look at their finish in home attendance since 2021: third, fifth, second, third and second of the 30 clubs.

The 42,425 tickets sold per game last year (per team data) trailed only the Dodgers at 49,537. The New York teams couldn’t quite keep up with 81 days of baseball Mardi Gras in the East Village.

The Yankees were coming off a pennant-winning season but ended up third at he home gate, two spots ahead of the Mets, who’d reached the 2024 National League Championship and trailed only the Dodgers in luxury-tax player payroll last year.

Wednesday’s news should surprise no one who’s been paying attention.

All Padres home games have become a happening, no matter the day of the week or the opponent. That’s been true since 2022, when only the Dodgers drew more fans.

This year’s season-ticket sellout does get its own special niche, coming four months after the family members of late Padres chairman Peter Seidler said they’re open to selling the club.

What better time, with billionaires and their proxies digging into the investment profile, for Padres fans to trumpet an important message to prospective buyers?

If you’re good to San Diego sports fans, they’ll be good to you.

If you buy it and don’t break it, we’ll pay up.

Win a World Series, and statues will be erected in your honor.

Impressive as Padres fan support will be in 2026 and probably beyond, prospective owners would take into account several other factors, many of them more important than home attendance.

Major League Baseball’s collective bargaining agreement is set to expire Dec. 1.

Whoever is calling the shots for the Padres will try to anticipate how the next labor pact will affect every team, not just the Padres.

The CBA negotiations will come amid contentious times within the industry. Owners of teams in small- and mid-sized markets have become more outspoken about obtaining a salary cap, a topic that has been a non-starter for MLB’s players’ union for several decades.

The greatest financial challenge the Padres face is the ability of the Dodgers and other bigger market clubs to command huge media rights fees, a disparity MLB commissioner Rob Manfred and some team owners are trying to address in the negotiations.

Padres fans, regardless, have made the club more capable of challenging for the World Series and will do so again in 2026.

Though the rival Diamondbacks play in a bigger media market and last year had a franchise-record 2025 luxury-tax payroll of $216 million that stood 14th of the 32 teams, per the Associated Press, the Padres had a $270 million payroll that landed sixth.

Here’s guessing that a big reason A.J. Preller had $54 million more to spend than Diamondbacks counterpart Mike Hazen was that the Padres’ projected revenues for 2025 exceeded Arizona’s by $107 million, per CNBC.

Why the difference? The Padres outdrew the budget-stretching Snakes by more than 1 million fans.

Advantaged by the $54 million edge in payroll, the ’25 Padres won 90 games and held off the Diamondbacks, who had 80 wins, in the wild-card races.

As we salute Padres fans for paying up — while lamenting that the team’s popularity has priced out many locals — let’s finish by asserting that San Diego’s fan base is the hungriest in MLB for a World Series title.

Thirteen World Series trophies have been won under the past two CBAs preceded by a full offseason.

Was payroll a factor? It appears so. Seven trophy winners were top-five in payroll, eight were top-10, two were top half and one — the sign-stealing Astros of eight years ago — landed 18th.

The Padres have finished seventh, fifth, third, 11th and sixth in payroll during the stretch of five top-five seasons in attendance. Since the pandemic-shortened season of 2020, when the Padres’ payroll ended up sixth, president of baseball operations A.J. Preller seems to have given would-be ticket buyers reason to trust him.

The proof: four playoff berths in the six years, and 90-plus wins in each of the past two years.

Will the ’26 team extend the success? Padres fans have improved those odds.