It appears that Dallas Cowboys playoff tickets are moving briskly on the secondary ticket market, but Cincinnati Bengals fans have yet to warm up to their team’s home playoff game against the New York Jets.
In addition to the Bengals, the Indianapolis Colts, coming off the public relations nightmare of pulling their starters in the second-to-last game of the season and losing their perfect record, are also reportedly experiencing slow ticket sales on the secondary market. And, the venerable New England Patriots are also seeing a slightly soft secondary ticket market this year. The Colts have a first-round buy, and contributing the Patriots’ slow sales is that fans are accustomed to the team playing in the AFC Conference Championship game, and they are a little jaded about the team playing in the opening round.
The Cowboys, traditionally one of the NFL’s most popular teams, are playing their first playoff game in their new stadium on January 9, a repeat of Sunday’s 24-0 shutout victory over the Philadelphia Eagles, and tickets are starting in the low one hundred dollar range on sites such as StubHub, and the average price ticket price is $218. The Cowboys have not won a playoff game in more than 12 years, and the Eagles have not lost a first-round playoff game with Andy Reid as head coach.
“With Dallas playing the Eagles on Saturday night instead of Sunday afternoon, sales are speeding up,” broker Jeff Greenberg, owner of ASC Ticket, told TicketNews. “Overall, NFL playoff ticket sales have been steady, if not necessarily strong, except for Cowboys’ tickets, which have been strong.”
The final playoff teams were decided yesterday, and some brokers said that sales have only been OK, but that they expect them to pick up by the middle of the week. Brokers holding Bengals tickets are hoping that will be the case.
“The [NFL] playoffs have not really started moving for us yet but based on the locations of the teams,” said Connecticut-based broker Jason Berger of AllShows.com, which specializes in New York area events and sports teams. “The Jets fans are starting to make plans after yesterday’s great win, and we expect to see activity for the Cincinnati game later in the week.”
Like the Colts, the Minnesota Vikings also have a first-round bye, and Minneapolis-based broker Cortney Storsved of Ticket King said fans are taking a wait-and-see approach.
“I think that right now Vikings playoff ticket sales are good, not great,” Storsved said. “We haven’t had a game in Minnesota like this that people really cared about since 1998 when the Vikings were 15-1, so there is definitely a lot of fan excitement surrounding the game.”
She added, “But, because we don’t know who our opponent will be, or which day the game will actually be played on, Vikings fans seem to be more reluctant to buy. That being said, the Vikings are sitting in a really good spot with a first week bye and home field advantage. There’s a possibility that the Vikings would play the [Green Bay] Packers in this game, which would be a great game and create quite a bit of demand for tickets.”
