TORONTO

With great success come great opportunities.

And for Rogers, the Blue Jay fever that has gripped Canada – and Toronto in particular – for over a year now, will allow ownership to raise prices for a great many season tickets next season as the Jays join the flex-price sporting world in a major way.

The Blue Jays announced Tuesday that for season tickets, all games will now be graded by a five-category system ranging from A+ (Opening Day and Canada Day), A (32 games), B (20), C (18) and D (nine) and prices will vary accordingly, with the result being a 13% average price increase for 54 games and a 7% decrease for 27 games.

Basically, it is going to cost more to see high demand games (literally, the hotter the ticket, the more the ducat will go for, American League East opponents and weekends will be higher on the scale), while the less desirable games will now sell for less.

That was already happening for single-game and group tickets as of this season, but it is new for season tickets (previously, it was 49 premium games, 32 regular).

“This is how (Major League Baseball) pricing structures have evolved,” new Blue Jays executive vice-president of business operations Andrew Miller told a few media members in a roundtable Sunday.

“We are acknowledging that 81 games are not equal.”

The Maple Leafs introduced dynamic pricing for single games in five categories ahead of the 2013-14 NHL season, the Raptors two years earlier and season tickets eventually followed suit.

Miller said the Jays are actually late to the party.

The first-place team has been hugely successful at the box office in 2016, selling out for the 28th time on Sunday, vs. six sellouts at this time last season. According to Miller, tickets sold are up 24% and the team has surpassed three million in tickets sold for the first time since 1993 (in strike-shortened 1994, the Jays led the American League in attendance for the sixth season in a row. This will be the first time since).

Miller said it was “a difficult answer” whether the team will now make more revenue per ticket.

“It will be more choices for some fans ... We took an in-depth look at ways to create value and have decreased prices for a third of the games,” he said.

The club is rewarding current season seat holders who are willing to renew quickly. From Monday-Sep. 8, they can save up to 20% on their 2017 season seats during an early bird renewal period.

New season seats will go on sale on Aug. 24, existing seats will be reserved until Sep. 30, after that, seats not renewed will be made available for other fans to purchase.

Game packs will also be changing.

Miller, a native of Southern California and former left-handed pitcher for UC Berkeley and ex-Cleveland Indians senior vice president of strategy and business analytics, replaced Canadian Stephen Brooks in April.

This was Miller's first meeting with the local media.

The 41-year-old's wife and two-year-old daughter moved to Toronto over the All-Star break.

In terms of other matters, Miller said there is “nothing new” on the Spring Training front (Toronto's long-standing agreement with Dunedin, Florida expires at the end of 2017 and the stadium and facilities there need to be considerably renovated.

He also added that plans to go to natural grass at Rogers Centre are not dead and remain under investigation.