The Detroit Tigers are the best team in baseball, and confidence about their team is oozing out of Metro Detroit.
“Even when they’re down a run late in a game, I know they’re going to come back and win,” said Jerry Yatooma, a former college baseball player and current coach for Livonia Stevenson High School’s baseball program.
But one nagging question has plagued the Tigers through the first 57 games: Why can’t the Tigers fill the seats behind home plate?
Burning up the call lines on talk radio and getting considerable engagement on social media is the glaring sight of empty seats directly behind home plate, and within clear view of every Tigers home broadcast.
Newly constructed for the 2025 season, the home plate seating mirrors the corporate-tier high ticket box seats most MLB teams now have in their ballparks.
The New York Yankees ignited the trend over a decade ago when they installed first-class seating behind home plate and began drawing celebrities to nationally televised games.
Most teams followed suit, and prior to this season, the Tigers were one of only three teams without a Home Plate Club seating level.
However, the Tigers have seemingly been unable to fill those seats, even for the sacred home opener when the entire downtown was ablaze with excitement and hope that the late 2024 playoff run wasn’t a fluke.
I reached out to the team for answers. According to my source—a Detroit Tigers official asking not to be named—the Tigers front office is well aware of the controversy around the empty home plate seats.
The team has apparently been less than happy with its coverage—particularly on FM 97.1 The Ticket.
My source stated 80% of the Home Plate Club seats have been sold for the season, but the team has run into a secondary issue: The private and all-inclusive dining area for those with Club seating tickets is not yet open.
The dining area located behind and under the Home Plate seating area is completed, but not yet operational. Currently, Home Plate Club members must walk up to the concourse to a reserved area located along the right field line, a decent walk.
My source assured me the permanent Home Plate Club could open any day and will be operational before the All-Star Break.
But the empty seats seen on local and national telecasts is creating embarrassing optics for the team at the top of the league.
Acknowledging the the optics of empty seats, my source stated that often-floated immediate fixes—such as allowing young families to sit in the seats on a game-by-game basis—are not feasible.
“We can’t hand-pick families or individuals to come down and sit in those seats only to have the club members show up in the fifth or sixth inning and demand their seats back,” the official said.
The seats are exorbitantly priced for even upper-middle-class Tigers fans.
Seat packages range in price from $10,500 to $40,000, and are sold in quarter-, half-, or full-season packages.
Single-game tickets in the Home Plate Club, sold individually at the start of the season, are no longer for sale, according to my source. No explanation for that switch was given.
With an eye on charitable giving and public relations, the Detroit Tigers do control an unspecified number of seats in the Home Plate Club they use to seat low-income families, wounded veterans, and other charity groups, and in collaboration with the State of Michigan.
My source stated those initiatives will continue and expand in the future.
Currently, the bulk of the Home Plate Seats are owned by several unnamed corporations and businesses, but suggestions for how to fill them abound.
One possibility floated by multiple Tigers fans I spoke with was putting local celebrities into those seats to draw out the corporate and CEO class for games.
The notion assumes that it wouldn’t be hard to induce any number of Detroit Lions, Red Wings, or Pistons into those seats, creating a pull for club members to get their asses into the seats they paid for.
Famous Tigers fans span the country and echelons of the upper crust: Jack White, Bob Seger, Kid Rock, Eminem, J.K. Simmons, Tim Allen. Hell, they could even stick Tom Selleck in a Hawaiian shirt and do a Magnum PI night.
This can’t be that hard, and our pride over the best team in baseball is on the line.
Mark Nold, COO of Ambulatory Anesthesia Solutions headquartered in Metro Detroit, a lifelong Detroiter and Tigers fan from birth, was beyond excited by the team’s recent success. He purchased a suite for himself and close personal friends this season.
“When the Tigers are winning, this city is electric,” Nold said. “This could be the year we’ve all been waiting for.”
Jay Murray is a writer for Michigan Enjoyer and has been a Metro Detroit-based professional investigator for 22 years. Follow him on X @Stainless31.
