Cards Hot Ticket

The new St. Louis Cardinals stadium appears to be in no danger of having vast numbers of empty seats.

Three million tickets have already been sold or committed for the 2006 season at Busch Stadium. Only 500,000 will be available when single-game tickets go on sale March 4th.

The baseball team cut off season ticket sales February 24, with 27,500 already sold. That’s 2.3 million for the stadium’s 81 games. The remaining 700,000 tickets comes from group ticket sales, smaller ticket packages, tickets for friends and family of the organization and players and giveaway tickets for military and clergy. Many MLB teams don’t sell 3 million tickets in an entire season.

The stadium’s construction is ahead of schedule, according to Cardinals president Mark Lamping, but isn’t expected to be finished until mid-July.

The stadium will be fully functional before then, but will only hold 40,713 of its final 46,861 capacity.