A Blue Jays fan who requires accessible seating at Rogers Centre has filed complaints to Ticketmaster, team owner Rogers and the ballclub itself over the sky-high World Series resale ticket prices.
Ryan Healey-Ogden, who is disabled following a car crash more than a decade ago that left him with a severe ankle injury and resulted in him having difficulty climbing stairs, also wants to see changes to how accessible seating is made available in stadiums and arenas.
“I’ve been disabled for a long part of my life,” he said. “I’m a young disabled person at 44. You look at me, you don’t know that I’m disabled.”
Healey-Ogden said he attempted to purchase tickets to Game 1 of the World Series when seats went on sale Tuesday morning.
Getting to Blue Jays games during the regular season is tough for Healey-Ogden because he is also dealing with various health issues that forced him to stop working as a cybersecurity professional in March.
Before the injury and health struggles, he was living in Toronto and would attend about 30 Blue Jays games a season. Now, he tries to see one game a year.
After the Blue Jays clinched a spot in the World Series, the Orillia resident told his wife that he was determined to catch a championship game live.
“This is the only chance that I’m going to have in my life, probably,” he said.
“I was 10 years old when the other one happened. I remember celebrating with my grandfather. My grandfather got me into the Blue Jays by taking me to a game in 1989. I’ve been a diehard Blue Jays fan since.”
However, after waiting an hour-and-a-half to get through Ticketmaster’s online queue, he only found resale tickets available.
In the stadium’s 100 level, two tickets were listed at $8,100 each, which included close to $1,500 in fees and taxes.
Healey-Ogden said accessible tickets that had a face value of $1,000 were now selling for thousands of dollars.
“It made me furious on so many levels,” he said.
One of the complaints he has with the stadium is the limited number of spots that are allotted to disabled fans when compared to the more than 41,000 capacity.
While the team doesn’t list the exact number of accessible spots available in the 100, 200 and 500 levels, Healey-Ogden estimates that at most there are 150 throughout the Rogers Centre for disabled fans to choose from.
“Accessible seats are subject to the same on sale schedules and ticket availability as standard seating and are sold on a first-come, first-served basis,” the Blue Jays’ accessibility page reads .
He fired off scathing emails addressed to Ticketmaster, Rogers and the Blue Jays. As of Friday, only Ticketmaster responded.
Following a back-and-forth exchange, the company was ultimately of no help to Healey-Ogden, referring him to the team.
“I understand your frustration,” a Ticketmaster representative wrote in response. “The event organizer is the one that decides how tickets will be sold.”
Healey-Ogden called it a “cop out” by the ticket seller.
With the resale ticketing fiasco the Blue Jays endured this week, Healey-Ogden said his efforts have turned to protecting disabled consumers from being gouged by greedy resellers.
“My end goal out of this would be (that) Ticketmaster changes their policy immediately,” he said. “That wheelchair tickets, any disabled tickets are final sale, non-transferable, and non-resellable. That means people who are disabled, … they get to buy them at face value, and they get to go.”
