Monday, November 10, 2008

Bills in Toronto: Good sections still available

A quick Ticketmaster search five minutes ago revealed that if I was rich and stupid I could still buy 10 seats side-by-side-by...for next month's Bills game in Toronto.

Section 209, row 8, seats 1 - 10. They are there for my taking. At $350 (plus fees and shipping) a pop. The game is 27 days away, by the way.

So much for the insatiable demand for NFL football in Toronto. It's enough to make us stick in the mud three downers jump for joy.

Look, no one is denying that there are a lot of NFL fans in T.O. No one is suggesting that there are more CFL fans in the city than those that prefer their gridiron Yankee. Clearly, there is interest in the game. But, enough to pay $350 a ticket?

At the risk of coming off as a bit cynical, it warms the heart to see the vultures fine folks at Rogers so off in their projections of demand. We've found the ceiling for Toronto sports, it seems. Perhaps the $1 billion+ franchise fee a NFL team would be worth isn't as appealing to Uncle Ted and Co. anymore

It's often been said that the NFL in Toronto is a no brainer--that 55,000 would gladly come out to support a team. Maybe. But, it's not so clear that there are 55,000 willing to come out and watch the Bills. At least not at the prices Rogers is looking for. In August, they had to resort to papering the house to make sure that the city wasn't embarrassed. Even then, scalpers were getting less than half face value in the lead up to the game.

Once again,that's 27 days to game-day. Lots of good seats are still available.

6 comments:

Navin Vaswani (@eyebleaf) said...

If I could tailgate to my heart's content, I'd probably do it.

Anonymous said...

I think the majority of the people who are passionate about the NFL in southern Ontario fit into one of two groups, 1. They already go to Bills games in Orchard Park, 2. They are smart enough to not pay the ridiculous prices being asked.

If these tickets were priced just 25% above the price in Orchard Park, the place would be full.

They got greedy.

Robert C. said...

I watch a lot of NFL football, but have no interest in that game at those prices. Could get NFL Sunday ticket for less than one of those tickets.

Anonymous said...

Let's say, for the sake of argument, the Bills do, indeed, move to Toronto.
What are they going to call the team?
Surely, the can't call them the Toronto Bills, could they?
That just doesn't make sense.
That would be like, oh I don't know, moving the New Orleans Jazz to Salt Lake City and calling them the Utah Jazz.
Doesn't make any sense at all.
They have to give the team a new moniker.
How about the Toronto Jolly Rogers?
No, huh?
Well, if anyone comes up with something better, let us know.

Tyler King said...

The Toronto Rogers Home Phones.

Dennis Prouse said...

They badly overshot the runway on pricing. As mentioned earlier, a premium of perhaps 25% on regular Bills prices might have been tolerated, but not this. If you are a big NFL fan from Southern Ontario, why in the world would you pay these prices when you could simply see one of their other regular season games in Buffalo for far less?

If anyone wants to see this game, BTW, simply wait until close to kickoff and walk down Front Street. Just as happened before the exhibition game, there will be tons of tickets available at a fraction of face value. Over the next few weeks, Rogers will be covertly dumping tons of discounted/free tickets out there, which people will then try to sell on game day.