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MLSE defends rising Maple Leafs ticket prices amid growing fan backlash

Any chance Toronto's last-place finish in 2025-26 would stop a rise ticket prices was dashed as even standing room spots went up.

Published Aug 26, 2026  •  Last updated 8 hours ago  •  3 minute read

Fans watch warm-ups prior to the game between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Boston Bruins at Scotiabank Arena last season. Getty Images

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The Maple Leafs best not stumble out of the gate this autumn in their four straight home games or their 16 at Scotiabank Arena up to American Thanksgiving.

With many fans filling social media with complaints this week about the latest increase in single-game tickets, customers aren’t likely to be in a patient mood, despite it being a recalibration campaign under a new general manager, coach and roster.

The cautious optimism of the summer when GM John Chayka lucked into Gavin McKenna as first overall draft, then added Sergei Bobrovsky in net, defenceman Darren Raddysh and proven bottom six forwards, soured to a degree when average tickets went up to between $150 and $270.

Marquee games, such as the Sept. 29 season opener against Montreal when McKenna should debut, and Connor McDavid’s lone visit with Edmonton on Nov. 14. will be expensive, with $400 for standing room the current price scale when the Oilers arrive.

Leafs supporters, many of them with historical ties through grandparents and even great grandparents as the team approaches its centennial, are rarely this vociferous, even if many break and pay more in the end.

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The club has not been in a Stanley Cup final in almost 60 seasons — let alone winning one — and as the window of this latest rebuild  shrinks, they missed the playoffs in 2025-26. It’s going on a quarter century of failing to get past the second round. 

Standing room for the season opener is currently $268.58 on Ticketmaster, a game that will likely sell out, but early feedback when single seats hit the market were not encouraging.

While thousands of season-ticket accounts, many of them corporate, will continue to be huge revenue generators for Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, it was notable to see such slow movement on the April 5 home game versus Boston.  

Not part of the subscribers’ package, seats for that extra home date in the expanded 84-game NHL schedule, were not gobbled up right away by anyone.

When the prices were released to the public, the public unloaded on the club and MLSE.

“I get there’s McKenna hype but you absolutely cannot price tickets like this after how last season went fam,” one user replied to the team’s announcement on X.

“This is why the atmosphere sucks, it’s all rich people,” another commented.

“Hey guys so how much will the tickets cost if this team actually ever wins something? Bc this is insane,” a third user wrote.

“Boycott,” urged an Sun reader. “Sit in front of your TV.”

Several others attached screenshots of the prices for seats in the upper deck or for standing room that they felt were way out of line. When standing room tickets that aren’t being held back by the club don’t move quickly, it’s a red flag. It’s possible that if demand remains low, the face value of the seats for some games will be lowered, but that would upset those who did buy early or intended to re-sell at the original price. There is also new provincial legislation limiting re-sale markups.

A statement from Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment to the Toronto Star said, the organization noted there had been a 2% increase across the board, defending that as “lower than the national inflation rate.”

“Dynamic pricing, which was introduced years ago across the sports industry including in Toronto, gives fans a range of price options, with higher prices for the most in-demand games and lower-priced tickets available for other games,” the statement added.

MLSE, whose combined value of sports-related properties is abound $17 billion, has rarely frozen ticket prices, other than in 2004-05 when the previous NHL season was lost to a lockout.

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Season-ticket prices in some sections jumped 20% from last season. And while the sports world has changed a lot from when old Maple Leaf Gardens opened in 1931, tickets were between $1 and $3 back then and still $1.50 for an upper gray seat when the Leafs launched four Cup titles in the early ’60s.

Prices didn’t reach more than $100 for a lower tier spot until the late ’90s.

Lhornby@postmedia.com 

X: @sunhornby

— With Dan Bilicki files

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