Box seats

The box seats or boxes are some of the best seats in a ballpark, being located at field level in front of the grandstand. They are often reserved for season ticket holders or for special guests of the home team. In recent years, box seats have been largely replaced by luxury boxes as the highest-premium seats. The luxury boxes are usually situated in a mezzanine between tiers of the grandstand, although in some parks, there are also some located immediately behind home plate at field level. Field-level box seats are usually open, while luxury boxes are often protected by windows.

The concept of the box, taken from 19th-Century theaters, is that a rich patron rents the entire box for the event or for the season, and invites guests to take the other seats, whose number can change up to a certain maximum depending on the game. This concept has been retained with luxury boxes, although it is corporations rather than rich individuals who are the target market. Both are especially profitable for teams, as seats can be sold for many times the cost of even a premium ticket. Thus in the 1990s and 2000s, it was a common complaint of owners looking for a new ballpark that they needed a facility in which more of the lucrative luxury boxes could be built in order to collect the revenues required to remain competitive.