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ST. LOUIS — Ticket sales for the Cardinals’ home opener are on track with last year, team officials said, after a getting off to a sluggish start.

As of Wednesday, about 2,900 tickets remained unsold for the March 27 game against the Minnesota Twins. The matchup will mark the official start to baseball season in St. Louis and will be celebrated at the stadium with giveaways, Clydesdales and Fredbird.

“It’s like an unofficial holiday,� Anuk Karunaratne, Cardinals’ senior vice president of business operations, said. “We’re on pace for it to be a full ballpark.�

In late February, as many as 13,000 open seats at Busch Stadium, which has 46,000 seats and some standing room tickets. But the availability continues to drop as Opening Day nears — as expected, said Karunaratne.

In fact, according to the Cardinals’ MLB ticket , over 1,000 seats were sold from Monday to Tuesday.

How quickly home opener tickets sell varies season to season, he said. “It’s tracking very similar to last year in terms of pacing, I would expect based on how things are progressing to be similar to last year.�

Given that the team is coming off of another below-average season, demand wasn’t as high as, say, when the Cardinals had just been in the playoffs or World Series, Karunaratne said. Still, St. Louis fans are passionate and the team’s Opening Day traditions will draw a crowd no matter what, he said.

Home-opener ticket sales have always come in at over 45,000 sold, except for 2020 and 2021 when the COVID-19 pandemic prevented full capacity.

In 2023, the team sold 47,649 tickets for its first home game, but after a losing season that number fell to 47,273 for Opening Day in 2024.

The Cardinals finished seventh in Major League Baseball in attendance per game in 2024, their worst ranking since 2004 and down from second two years earlier.

And fans responded to a lackluster season. Nearly 4,500 fewer fans passed through Busch Stadium’s gates per game last season, the largest decline in MLB. The team’s total attendance of 2.88 million in 2024 was its lowest in a non-COVID year since 1997.

Karunaratne said that this year might be similar to last season, with ticket sales lower than the historical average, but that’s to be expected as the Cardinals work to “reset.�

The team has embarked on what it is calling a “transition,� beginning spring training this month as the lone team in the majors not to have spent a dollar on a big league free agent.

At the conclusion of last season, Cardinals’ president of baseball operations John Mozeliak was asked if fans delivered a message with dwindling attendance and vast numbers of empty seats.

“I understand from a fan perspective expectations are high. I’d be lying to you if I said I didn’t notice it. We certainly want to get back to creating a game-day experience that our fans appreciate and want to experience and enjoy.

“Part of that obviously is winning baseball,� he said. “Part of that is enhancing that experience.�

Ethan Erickson and Josh Renaud of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this story.