Death, taxes, and increases in prices for tickets to live events. Two of the three remain certainties in life, Chicago Fire fans will be getting relief from one. As the team navigates MLS’s historic schedule shift and a move to their new permanent home at McDonalds Park soon after, team representatives have told MIR97 Media that they will be lowering prices on the cost of season tickets. The move is a significant shift for the Fire after several years of increases in the cost of tickets for fans.
Price Relief to Bridge Gap With New MLS Schedule
The lower prices will be in effect for the remainder of the time that the Fire are slated to play at Soldier Field, meaning both the 2027 “sprint” season to be held from February through May next year with seven home games (all against in-conference opponents), as well as the first season under MLS’s new fall-to-spring calendar starting in July 2027 and running through April 2028, with a winter break from mid-December through mid-February (with a standard 34-game season including 17 dates at home).
To learn more about the change, MIR97 Media spoke to Jake Winowich, the team’s Vice President of Ticket Sales. “Anyone who's a current member of ours,” Winowich said in an interview, “that's back for these seasons will see a decrease everywhere from supporters through premium on a per-match, per-seat basis.” During the change, season ticket memberships will shift from a 12 month plan to an 18 month plan, meaning that “their payments will be decreased on the payment plans as well.”
The exact decrease that individual accounts will see will vary, with Winowich saying that it was due to the variety of prices that current members currently pay. “We have multiple different price points ranging from someone who’s got a lounge lease or a suite to someone who’s in the Supporter’s Section. We’ve also got scaled pricing depending on if folks were here prior to Messi joining the league, if they came on board at that time, or if they’re rookies this year. So more than I’ve seen at other teams, we’ve got a variety of different price points. Each of those are impacted differently.”
Still, Winowich said, “I can commit to and say that everybody’s price per match is going down. We looked at a couple different options ‒ a minimal increase, going flat ‒ and Joe [Mansueto, team owner] and Dave [Baldwin, team president] were adamant on, "No, let's bring this backwards. Let's reduce the price for everyone through this transitional period, and let's go win some championships, have some fun, and get excited heading into McDonald's Park."
Winowich said that season ticket members will be able to see their new pricing for the 18-month span starting Friday afternoon, with emails going out at about 3 PM.
In addition to committing to a price decrease, “no benefits are going away from our members,” Winwoich said. That includes the parking benefit to accounts with two or more memberships, and the ability to move tickets to other matches, which Winowich cited as two of the team’s most popular benefits.
Across sports, price decreases are rare — and when they happen, normally coincide with particular headwinds confronting a team, such as a series of losing seasons. That makes the Fire’s shift here an incredibly rare move, the motivation behind which Winodwich cited as being Mansueto’s “wanting to grow and take care of the fan base.”
New Schedule Presents Challenges for Fire
The schedule change presents particular challenges to the Fire, who are, along with the New England Revolution and New York City, three of the only cold-weather teams in the league that play in large buildings built for other sports with far more capacity than is needed for most MLS matches.
The Fire’s attendance has typically suffered early in the year, when many games are played in cold weather. Last season, the Fire averaged a team-record 23,420 fans per game, but outside of an April matinée featuring Lionel Messi, the team didn’t surpass that average until 26,942 showed up to see the Fire face Nashville in mid-June.
This year, although Winowich expects the team to once again post a team record for attendance, the Fire didn’t exceed last year’s average until their seventh home game, featuring an early afternoon kickoff against the New York Red Bulls.
That makes the new schedule starting in mid-2027 especially challenging, since it will deprive the Fire of key summer dates in June and July (and reserve May for playoffs), which are typically some of the Team’s best-performing dates. Despite those headwinds, the Fire are “genuinely excited” about the calendar change, affording to Winowich, and the move to their new home in McDonald’s Park for the 2028-2029 season.
While fans have shared this excitement, many have been vocal with trepidation about possible price increases when the Fire move to their new home. While Windowich declined to speak on exact pricing at the new stadium, existing members will realistically be using what the new, lower pricing they will be paying over the 18 months ahead of the move as the benchmark for any price changes. “it may not be apples-to-apples on pricing,” Winowich said, “if you have seats at center pitch in row 15 at Soldier Field compared to the new stadium, but there will be pricing options for everybody. We are confident that our members will be able to come along with us.”
