Blue Jays fans skipping Seattle road trip this year

The Toronto Blue Jays are getting ready to take on the Seattle Mariners this weekend, and while we would typically see a flock of Canadian fans heading over to T-Mobile Park, the stands may look a little different this year.

Long-time Vancouver ticket reseller Kingsley Bailey says his phone would normally be ringing off the hook with Jays fans trying to get last-minute tickets, but a quick look online now shows an abundance of tickets going for as low as $25.

“When you go watch the Mariners play the Blue Jays, 90 per cent of fans are Canadians,” said Bailey, the manager of Vancouver Ticket.

“We usually get a lot of people asking, ‘What’s the chance of getting tickets?’ Now we have people asking, ‘What’s the chance of selling tickets?’”

Connor Newcombe and Emily Peden, a couple from Vancouver, are big fans of the Toronto baseball team and have made it a yearly tradition to go down to Seattle to catch the series. But the tariff war and Trump’s threats to annex Canada have thrown a curveball to their plans.

“When we moved out here from Edmonton, this was one of the things I was absolutely looking forward to,” Newcombe told The Leader Spirit.

“We’d go down not just for Blue Jays games, we’d go for 10-15 Mariners games. And there’s no desire now.”

Newcombe and Peden say they don’t see themselves going down to the States in this political climate anytime soon.

“If the messaging is that America needs nothing from Canadians, then the messaging is Seattle won’t miss the money we spend when we go down there,” Peden said.

Instead, they say they are going to be supporting more local teams, like the Vancouver Canadians.

“We’ve got one of the best stadiums in the country in our backyard right here,” Newcombe said.

“The facility and the fan experiences here are fantastic; I don’t think we’re going to miss much.”

Tourism group Visit Seattle says more than 1.7 million Canadians visited the city in 2024, spending close to $600 million. Now, many Seattle businesses are now offering a discount to Canadian visitors to draw in more foot traffic.

“People are just voting with their wallets and not opening it up,” Bailey said.

We have reached out to the Mariners, who say they have heard that fewer Canadians will be making the trip this weekend, but they still expect to see solid attendance.