Fans who are signed up for the free Nats Fan Club received an email Thursday with information about registering for a lottery for the chance to purchase “an extremely limited number of World Series tickets.” Nonmembers can join the fan club this week and still be eligible to enter the lottery. Registration for the lottery must be completed by 5 p.m. Friday.

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“Winners of the ticket purchase opportunity drawing will be notified on or about Saturday, October 19 with a purchase link and password that can be used to purchase up to two (2) tickets for each possible 2019 World Series game at Nationals Park,” the email read.

On Thursday, the Nationals announced that fans who purchased at least one ticket to any of the Nationals’ home games in the National League Championship Series — including Game 5, which wasn’t necessary — through the team would be given the opportunity to purchase up to two single-game tickets for each World Series home game in a presale Friday at 10 a.m. Those fans would receive an email with detailed purchase instructions Friday morning, the team said, and all tickets were subject to availability.

Many fans who received the email and attempted to access the presale on Friday encountered long waits in the virtual waiting room. Some fans that got through reported that tickets were only available for Game 4 and were gone within seconds. Others encountered messages that read, “There are currently no tickets available for World Series home games." At least a few fans did manage to buy tickets. Prices for the presale ranged from $375 for a standing-room only ticket to $545 for a ticket in the left field or right field corner.

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A limited number of World Series tickets, at discounted plan-holder prices, are available to fans who purchase a new 2020 Nats Plus full- or half-season plan. The cheapest half-season Nats Plus plan for 2020 is $840.

Season ticket holders who renewed for the 2020 season were previously given the opportunity to purchase the number of tickets in their plan for the entire postseason. On Tuesday, Nats Plus members were emailed a link to a presale with the opportunity to purchase up to four additional single-game tickets for each of the Nationals’ three possible World Series home games, again subject to availability. As was the case with last year’s All-Star Game at Nationals Park, some of the ticket inventory for the World Series goes to Major League Baseball — about 20 percent, according to an MLB spokesman. Participating teams choose how to distribute their World Series tickets. More information is available on the Nationals’ website.

Plan-holder prices for World Series tickets range from $155 for upper gallery seats to $470 for DeltaSky360 front-row seats. Box office (presale) prices for the same sections range from $285 to $660, according to materials the Nationals sent to plan holders, while standing-room-only tickets are priced at $269. The Nationals have not announced plans to make any additional World Series tickets available to the general public beyond this week’s presales and the lottery.

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Given the limited number of tickets the Nationals have made available to those who aren’t plan holders — and the fact that D.C. hasn’t hosted a World Series since 1933 — the asking price for tickets on the secondary market is exorbitant. As of Thursday afternoon, the cheapest standing-room-only tickets to Game 3 on StubHub and SeatGeek were $819 and $725, respectively. Those prices probably will come down over the next week, especially if the Nationals face the Astros instead of the Yankees. By comparison, the cheapest tickets on the secondary market for potential Game 1s in New York and Houston were roughly $680 and $400, respectively, as of Thursday afternoon.

The Nationals’ subreddit features a useful thread about this topic, and one user created a shared Google Sheet for buying, selling and trading World Series tickets.

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