A short, honest accounting of what's measured, how, and how often.
The headline price for every park is the cheapest plain all-beef hot dog (~6 inches, standard bun) sold at a main concession stand at the standard non-promotional price. Specialty dogs (Bao dog, Sonoran dog, footlongs, gourmet menu items) are listed in row notes but never used as the headline. If a park sells only specialty dogs at the main concessions, the cheapest specialty option is used and that fact is flagged in the row's notes.
Every price ran through an adversarial multi-agent check before publication:
Rows where two independent sources agreed within ±10% are marked verified. Rows backed by one plausible source are reported. Submissions from the public are crowdsourced until re-verified. Rows the Skeptic rejected outright are needs review.
"Dollar Dog Tuesdays," "Loonie Dog Tuesdays," "$313 Value Tuesdays" — these are real and they're listed in each row's deal_night column. They are never used as the headline price. The headline is always the standard non-promotional menu price, so cross-park comparisons are apples to apples.
Hot dog prices aren't published consistently. Some parks get covered by major outlets every season (Yankees, Dodgers, Phillies); others go quiet for a year and resurface in the next year's roundup. The big aggregator articles that travel through search results — Cheapism, WebstaurantStore, Yahoo Sports — are often re-publishing a single Statista dataset from the previous season, dressed up with a new title. We treat those as one source, not new sources.
When we can't find a season's price under the rules above, the row's price field stays null. We do not interpolate between adjacent years, average the league, or carry a 2024 figure forward and label it 2025. The card and the modal will both show "No 2025 data" and the year-over-year comparison is suppressed entirely — no arrow, no color, no badge. The 2024 and 2026 prices remain visible in the price history because both are independently verified; the gap stays a gap.
Today, 21 of 30 parks have a verified 2025 price. The remaining 9 (Progressive Field, Tropicana Field, Rogers Centre, PNC Park, Fenway Park, Great American Ball Park, Busch Stadium, Nationals Park, Angel Stadium) show 2024 and 2026 history without a YoY claim. The "Biggest YoY increase" and "Biggest YoY decrease" sort views exclude these parks rather than rank them on a 2-year delta. As 2025 sources surface, rows get backfilled and the count moves.
Every row has a date we last looked at it. We re-check anything older than a year. If you DM us on X saying a price is wrong, we open the link, dig around, and if you're right, we change it.
Where a park's standard concession dog is documented as kosher all-beef, that's noted. Where a park serves a pork blend or a specialty meat (e.g., the kosher Hebrew National at certain venues), the row's hotdog_meat column reflects it. The headline price column does not adjust for this — a $5 dog is a $5 dog regardless of meat.
Concession prices vary by section (premium clubs charge more), by vendor (a stand near home plate may price differently from one at the upper deck), and from game to game (theme nights can shift the menu). The headline price is the most-commonly-encountered standard menu price as documented by current published sources. We don't claim it's the price you'll pay at every stand; we claim it's the price the league and the press currently report.
Spotted a different price? DM us on X. Good tips become rows on the next update.