White Sox Avoid Paying Ticket Sales Bonus For 13th Consecutive Season

The White Sox 2025 home slate has come to a close, with Sunday’s 3-2 loss to the Padres marking the final game of the season at Rate Field.  

The paid attendance for the game was 24,205. Not bad for a Sunday with the Bears in town, but it means the White Sox fell short of 1.93 million in total ticket sales and paid attendance for the season.

The White Sox finished the season with a total attendance of 1,487,757, which was up from last year's 1,380,443. But because ticket sales finished below 1.93 million, Jerry Reinsdorf will not have to pay a bonus for the taxpayer-owned stadium. 

Under the current agreement with the Illinois Sports Authority, the White Sox must pay a fee on each ticket sold over 1.93 million in paid attendance, a total the White Sox have not reached for 13 consecutive seasons (not counting the COVID-shortened 2020 campaign). To reach that bonus, the White Sox would need to average roughly 24,000 fans per home game. If that bonus was triggered, the White Sox would be on the hook for $3 for every ticket sold over the 1.93 million mark. 

The closest the White Sox have come in the last decade was in 2022, after winning the division the year prior. In 2022, the White Sox had just over 2 million tickets sold but only 1.92 million in paid attendance. 

This is not the only team-friendly element of the agreement, which is set to expire in 2028. Under the agreement, the White Sox didn’t have to pay a fee to use the stadium until 2008. 

The city of Chicago and the state of Illinois also contribute $5 million annually to help fund the ballpark. The White Sox only pay $1.5 million in annual rent and control revenue from ticket sales, concessions, parking, and merchandise. 

In the first ten years of the lease, the club did not have to pay rent if annual attendance fell below 1.5 million. However, the White Sox only fell short of that mark twice from 1991 to 2000. 

In 2009, the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority paid roughly $7 million to build ChiSox Bar & Grill, a restaurant attached to the outside of the stadium. The White Sox only chipped in $1 million for the project, according to a previous report from the Chicago Tribune.