The Associated Press

NEW YORK - At the box office as in the standings, not all teams are equal.

For a visit by Barry Bonds and the National League champion San Francisco Giants next summer, New York Mets fans are being charged up to twice as much as they are for games against some other teams playing a similar midweek series.

The Giants fall into the Mets' "gold" category, as do weekend games against the New York Yankees, Atlanta Braves, Seattle Mariners and St.Louis Cardinals.

At Yankee Stadium, ticket prices will shoot up for games against the Boston Red Sox, Mariners, Oakland A's and all NL opponents.

Mimicking airlines and hotels, though not yet with the minute-by-minute changes of those industries, baseball is turning more toward variable ticket pricing to meet rising player salaries.

Five other teams - the Giants, Cardinals, Colorado Rockies, Cleveland Indians and Chicago Cubs - so far have announced ticket plans that vary by opponent, date and time of game. Many other teams are considering similar plans for next season.

Fans might wonder if they're getting a bargain or a raw deal. The answer is probably both.

The good news for fans is that the plans will offer more affordable seats for midweek games against most teams and for weekend games against some. Average ticket prices in baseball are expected to be held down to a 5 percent increase next season - far closer to the rise of the Consumer Price Index than the average 10 percent increase of the past decade.

The good news for clubs is that they'll take in greater overall revenues while filling seats that ordinarily might go empty.

The problem for fans and clubs is that opponents who seem golden one year could be leaden the next. If Bonds and the Giants are slumping when they come to town, fans paying jacked-up prices might feel ripped off.

"The product the fan is buying is a Mets game, not a Barry Bonds game or an Atlanta Braves game," one fan, Scott Perl of Albuquerque, N.M., wrote in a letter to The New York Times. "A higher charge is merely a rise in ticket prices disguised with a rationale."

Baseball attendance dropped 6 percent last season while player salaries kept climbing. Looking for revenues, clubs increasingly are turning to creative and complicated pricing schemes.

The Rockies, for example, have four tiers of tickets and 17 types of seats, with prices ranging from $43 for club-level infield to $4 in the Rockpile. The Yankees have a top price of $72 and a low of $5 on certain dates.

The Mets designated 17 games as "gold," 21 as "silver," 27 as "bronze" and 16 as "value." Prices for gold and silver games are higher than last season, bronze remain the same, and value games are lower.

"The Mets' plan is probably the most beneficial for fans," Migala said. "If I'm a Mets fan, I'm excited about it. They did a great job of keeping their prices in tow across the line."

When teams look at ticket pricing, they start with the player payroll, stadium costs and other factors, figure out what they need to generate to make a profit, and work back from there. The key for the clubs, Giants president Larry Baer said, is to avoid seeming like they're extracting every dollar they can from fans.

For fans looking for value, paying less for a midweek game is not different than going to a discounted matinee on Broadway. Conversely, paying more for a weekend game is similar to buying Saturday night show tickets. It all comes down to supply and demand, the same principle that always has driven scalper tickets.

For the Mets and other teams, the opponent is not as big a factor as the day of the game. Most baseball fans prefer to come to a Saturday game, regardless of the opponent, rather than see a better team on a Tuesday night. They're more likely to fill the ballparks on a Saturday and spend more money.

"If a father wants to take his 7-year-old son to see a major league baseball game, he'll be able to do that more inexpensively than he has been able to in years past," Migala said. "That's great for the average fan."

The NHL is doing similar variable price ticketing, focusing less on the opponent and more on the day of the week. The Pittsburgh Penguins are charging $5 more for all weekend games and for weeknights against three opponents. The Ottawa Senators are charging 20 percent more for games against Toronto and Detroit and 10 percent more for Montreal. That backfired on the Senators this season when games against Toronto and Montreal failed to sell out as they usually had.

The NBA and NFL have stayed away from the strategy, arguing that it's dangerous to presume one year to the next which teams are better draws.

"That valuation can change very quickly," says Bernie Mullin, an NBA senior vice president.

One of the problems for clubs rating their opponents is the message it sends to the other team.

"Baseball managers don't like rating opponents," Migala said. "They don't want to motivate the other team any more than they already are. If I'm the manager of the Florida Marlins and our games cost less than others when we go into another town, I could put that on the bulletin board in the locker room and say, 'Hey, these guys don't think much of us."'