Sabres New Ticket Sale Policy: “Hometown Advantage”

[Taro T]

1 minute ago, That Aud Smell said:

I obviously agree with this. That said, I am also giving additional thought - it's more just whirring in the background - to @dudacek's point about how damn MANY Leaf (and Canadien? (and Jets? (and Canuck?))) fans there are right over the border. It's a peculiar, unique conundrum for the Sabres as a franchise.

Well, get the Sabres back on either OTA TV in Buffalo or on cable TV on the NP and after a handful of years you push the bulk of the barbarians back to the other side of Welland.  Which is a start.  

They're never going to eliminate this issue, but this particular solution is going to shaft a lot of their existing fan base which will have the perverse result of turning some of them into Sabres haters.  Still don't see why they don't wait to see how icing a great team works towards solving the issue rather than just hammering it now.

There are a LOT of Fish fans in Ra-cha-cha.  (A fair number over the border as well.)  The Bills don't need to resort to this type of solution to keep how many of their fans show up down to manageable levels.  Put a good product out in front of the fans and your fans will want to show up.

Until the past couple of years, the MMArena was never overtaken by Bruin fans even though as a relic of the Bruins Amerks affiliation there are a lot of Bruins fans in Ra-cha-cha.  What, are they going to stop allowing folks from the former Flour City to buy tickets the day they go on sale too?  Maybe they get hypertechnical with this and bump certain zip codes on a game by game basis?  Why yes Mr. Pittsford resident you may buy a Yotes ticket immediately but if you want to see the B's it's the back of the bus for you!

Just seems like they're planning on using a saws all when an exacto knife would do.

Maybe a little sandpaper (fixing the team) is all they really need and both cutting methods are excessive?

[dudacek]

8 minutes ago, Taro T said:

Well, get the Sabres back on either OTA TV in Buffalo or on cable TV on the NP and after a handful of years you push the bulk of the barbarians back to the other side of Welland.  Which is a start.  

They're never going to eliminate this issue, but this particular solution is going to shaft a lot of their existing fan base which will have the perverse result of turning some of them into Sabres haters.  Still don't see why they don't wait to see how icing a great team works towards solving the issue rather than just hammering it now.

There are a LOT of Fish fans in Ra-cha-cha.  (A fair number over the border as well.)  The Bills don't need to resort to this type of solution to keep how many of their fans show up down to manageable levels.  Put a good product out in front of the fans and your fans will want to show up.

Until the past couple of years, the MMArena was never overtaken by Bruin fans even though as a relic of the Bruins Amerks affiliation there are a lot of Bruins fans in Ra-cha-cha.  What, are they going to stop allowing folks from the former Flour City to buy tickets the day they go on sale too?  Maybe they get hypertechnical with this and bump certain zip codes on a game by game basis?  Why yes Mr. Pittsford resident you may buy a Yotes ticket immediately but if you want to see the B's it's the back of the bus for you!

Just seems like they're planning on using a saws all when an exacto knife would do.

Maybe a little sandpaper (fixing the team) is all they really need and both cutting methods are excessive?

The plan is unfinished. As proposed, it doesn’t affect their season-ticket holder base at all. 
And it doesn’t even prevent those North of the border from buying tickets, it just makes them wait until the last-minute.

Basically all it is attempting to do is make sure the local market has an extended opportunity to fill the arena before opening the gates to the invading Huns.

[Taro T]

2 minutes ago, dudacek said:

The plan is unfinished. As proposed, it doesn’t affect their season-ticket holder base at all. 
And it doesn’t even prevent those North of the border from buying tickets, it just makes them wait until the last-minute.

Basically all it is attempting to do is make sure the local market has an extended opportunity to fill the arena before opening the gates to the invading Huns.

Never said it does directly affect (nor directly effect) the STH base.  This policy is strictly for single game seats.  But, if a 20 something from Fort Erie or Niagara on the Lake has to wait until the people in Kenmore and Penfield all get cracks at tix and he either can't buy a ticket or ends up in the corner in the nosebleeds when tix at CI were still available; maybe he gets ticked off and says screw it and eventually gives up on the Sabres.  There'll be a few people that happens to.  How many people that grew up Sabres fans that were planning on taking a trip to Buffalo are now going to bag the trip because they can't get good seats on day 1?  There'll likely be a few of those as well.

Rather than worrying about whether people are rooting for the Sabres, Loafs, or Kraken when they're in the building; how about worrying about how do they convert those that are within what should be their market that aren't Sabres fans into Sabres fans.  A much bigger priority of theirs should be getting the Sabres on TV on the NP.  And an even bigger priority than that should be making the team good again.  (Which is outside that VP's responsibilities; but coming up with a better TV plan isn't.)

[Randall Flagg]

2 hours ago, That Aud Smell said:

Fair deuce. I will reserve some of my outrage!

45, eh?

The team has the stat’s presumably. I’m not sure they number in the 1000s on most nights. They might. Damn sure a lot more than 45.

For leafs games in particular, I can usually see about 20 sabres fans in my section and the 2 adjacent. I'll ask them where they came from next time and we can extrapolate how many people in the building for leafs games are sabres fans from Ontario

I'm not claiming that this is true on any given night, but on nights where sabres fans are 5% of the crowd, the raw number is not going to be big. 

[That Aud Smell]

Just now, Randall Flagg said:

For leafs games in particular, I can usually see about 20 sabres fans in my section and the 2 adjacent. I'll ask them where they came from next time and we can extrapolate how many people in the building for leafs games are sabres fans from Ontario

I'm not claiming that this is true on any given night, but on nights where sabres fans are 5% of the crowd, the raw number is not going to be big. 

Those games where Leaf fans just completely take over are unusual, I think (I hope). We'll see what the coming season brings, I guess.

[Randall Flagg]

8 minutes ago, That Aud Smell said:

Those games where Leaf fans just completely take over are unusual, I think (I hope). We'll see what the coming season brings, I guess.

They are basically the only ones I'm talking about. I would implement a cold, ruthless Ticket Dictatorship for Leafs Habs and Bruins games only if I were in charge 

And leave every other game alone 

[Derrico]

1 hour ago, dudacek said:

The plan is unfinished. As proposed, it doesn’t affect their season-ticket holder base at all. 
And it doesn’t even prevent those North of the border from buying tickets, it just makes them wait until the last-minute.

Basically all it is attempting to do is make sure the local market has an extended opportunity to fill the arena before opening the gates to the invading Huns.

Sure but the ‘local market’ also includes southern Ontario. 

[Derrico]

29 minutes ago, Randall Flagg said:

For leafs games in particular, I can usually see about 20 sabres fans in my section and the 2 adjacent. I'll ask them where they came from next time and we can extrapolate how many people in the building for leafs games are sabres fans from Ontario

I'm not claiming that this is true on any given night, but on nights where sabres fans are 5% of the crowd, the raw number is not going to be big. 

I’ll get you started.  Four of us will be there from southern Ontario at leaf game cheering on our Sabres.

I agree with what Taro is saying.  If I didn’t have seasons this policy would be infuriating to the point it would absolutely dissuade me from going as often as I do.

Please don’t alienate your existing fanbase.  Many of which come from southern Ontario. I hate all the leaf fans in the building as well.  This isn’t the answer imo.

[...]

That Terry; just a few days ago becomes president of the team and already up to his old tricks.

[That Aud Smell]

11 minutes ago, ... said:

That Terry; just a few days ago becomes president of the team and already up to his old tricks.

 

[#freejame]

This is such a loser move that won’t do anything but make it more difficult for Sabres fans who want to support the team by purchasing from them. Opposition fans will still purchase from the secondary market at a markup like they have been for decades. Local fans waking up and deciding they want to catch a Sabres game are still going to first check the secondary market because it’s been cheaper than the team for the last decade. 

If you want a full barn of Sabres fans, ice a team that will create another waiting list. But even then they’ll still be in the arena in roughly the same number. 

[dudacek]

1 hour ago, Taro T said:

Never said it does directly affect (nor directly effect) the STH base.  This policy is strictly for single game seats.  But, if a 20 something from Fort Erie or Niagara on the Lake has to wait until the people in Kenmore and Penfield all get cracks at tix and he either can't buy a ticket or ends up in the corner in the nosebleeds when tix at CI were still available; maybe he gets ticked off and says screw it and eventually gives up on the Sabres.  There'll be a few people that happens to.  How many people that grew up Sabres fans that were planning on taking a trip to Buffalo are now going to bag the trip because they can't get good seats on day 1?  There'll likely be a few of those as well.

 

 

46 minutes ago, Derrico said:

Sure but the ‘local market’ also includes southern Ontario. 

So maybe the plan should be exempting those nearby Canadian postal codes that traditionally buy tickets when the Leafs aren’t in town, or implementing the policy only for Leaf games?

[dudacek]

10 minutes ago, #freejame said:

This is such a loser move that won’t do anything but make it more difficult for Sabres fans who want to support the team by purchasing from them. Opposition fans will still purchase from the secondary market at a markup like they have been for decades. Local fans waking up and deciding they want to catch a Sabres game are still going to first check the secondary market because it’s been cheaper than the team for the last decade. 

If you want a full barn of Sabres fans, ice a team that will create another waiting list. But even then they’ll still be in the arena in roughly the same number. 

While I’d have to agree with the bold, I don’t know that you’re seeing the point: the issue here is not preventing 2 or 3,000 opposition fans from showing up, it’s not allowing 12 or 13,000 of them to take over the building like they did last year.

[LTS]

The article reads like a Sabres fluff piece. "The Sabres won 25 of their 41 road games last season, the most by any NHL team that missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs since 2016. But their 17-20-4 home record was a key factor that conspired against them ending their 12-year playoff drought that is the longest in NHL history. That ranked just 27th in the 32-team league."

How does one's record CONSPIRE against them... the only CONSPIRING going on is placing a word like that into the article to steer an emotional response.

The entire concept of restricted sales is a farce.  Let's see, this policy does not apply when:

- STH sell their games to make money

- ticket sales from the priority areas are not high enough to keep the lower priority areas from buying

- entrepreneurs fire up "outoftownbuffalohockeytix.com" and then buy tickets to resell with a "minor service fee" attached

This policy however does:

- Assume where you live is directly correlated to the team you root for and annoys out of town fans who may end up being impacted

I'm going to hypothesize that Leafs fans will use this policy as motivation to attend in even greater numbers just to prove a point and poke at the front office.

 

[JohnC]

3 minutes ago, dudacek said:

 

So maybe the plan should be exempting those nearby Canadian postal codes that traditionally buy tickets when the Leafs aren’t in town, or implementing the policy only for Leaf games?

Why not simplify the ticketing issue instead of complicating by adding layer of exemptions? Sometimes not doing something is better than doing something. As many others have stated, the Toronto issue (if it really is an issue) will mostly be solved by using your resources to build up your own fan base instead of worrying about intruders who are also paying customers. I have no problem when there are a lot of Toronto fans in the house. They bring in a lot of energy and stoke a lot of energy from the home crowd. 

[Randall Flagg]

1 hour ago, Derrico said:

I’ll get you started.  Four of us will be there from southern Ontario at leaf game cheering on our Sabres.

I agree with what Taro is saying.  If I didn’t have seasons this policy would be infuriating to the point it would absolutely dissuade me from going as often as I do.

Please don’t alienate your existing fanbase.  Many of which come from southern Ontario. I hate all the leaf fans in the building as well.  This isn’t the answer imo.

I would rather alienate you four for one game per year than have what my wife and I have gone through at leaves games happen. It is an embarrassing, disgusting phenomenon that our arena's loudest night comes with 18000 blue and white jerseys making the noise. I have been treated like a road fan at an Oakland raiders game in our own building more than once. 

I would happily compromise and give southern Ontario sabres fans free tickets to another division game 

17 minutes ago, dudacek said:

 

So maybe the plan should be exempting those nearby Canadian postal codes that traditionally buy tickets when the Leafs aren’t in town, or implementing the policy only for Leaf games?

They could make this work trivially if they have clever people doing the job.

I'm sorry for my abominable sentence structure im at work

Edited August 30, 2023 by Randall Flagg

[Randall Flagg]

6 minutes ago, JohnC said:

Why not simplify the ticketing issue instead of complicating by adding layer of exemptions? Sometimes not doing something is better than doing something. As many others have stated, the Toronto issue (if it really is an issue) will mostly be solved by using your resources to build up your own fan base instead of worrying about intruders who are also paying customers. I have no problem when there are a lot of Toronto fans in the house. They bring in a lot of energy and stoke a lot of energy from the home crowd. 

The arena was full of leafs fans for the 4-1 comeback in the presidents trophy year. It will never not happen and will never not be a detestable experience for sabres fans that wish to see those games 

[JohnC]

4 minutes ago, Randall Flagg said:

The arena was full of leafs fans for the 4-1 comeback in the presidents trophy year. It will never not happen and will never not be a detestable experience for sabres fans that wish to see those games 

I'm not sure if I understand your point. If you are a Sabre fan you have an opportunity to buy tickets just like out of towners, many who are former residents who will be cheering for the home team. If the opposition makes a comeback, then so be it. That's simply a demonstration of the unpredictability of a sporting evident. 

[dudacek]

32 minutes ago, JohnC said:

Why not simplify the ticketing issue instead of complicating by adding layer of exemptions? Sometimes not doing something is better than doing something. As many others have stated, the Toronto issue (if it really is an issue) will mostly be solved by using your resources to build up your own fan base instead of worrying about intruders who are also paying customers. I have no problem when there are a lot of Toronto fans in the house. They bring in a lot of energy and stoke a lot of energy from the home crowd. 

 

14 minutes ago, JohnC said:

I'm not sure if I understand your point. If you are a Sabre fan you have an opportunity to buy tickets just like out of towners, many who are former residents who will be cheering for the home team. If the opposition makes a comeback, then so be it. That's simply a demonstration of the unpredictability of a sporting evident. 

It’s not hard to understand: we don’t have a problem with Leaf fans in our building, we have a problem with them taking over the building and ruining our in-game experience.

We are powerless to prevent it and appreciate that the team is taking steps to protect us.

Ive explained why “ice a better team” is overly simplistic upthread and I’m not going to repeat myself.

[#freejame]

48 minutes ago, dudacek said:

While I’d have to agree with the bold, I don’t know that you’re seeing the point: the issue here is not preventing 2 or 3,000 opposition fans from showing up, it’s not allowing 12 or 13,000 of them to take over the building like they did last year.

I know the team likely has that data, but I’d be very surprised if that many out of town fans buy directly from the Sabres. Maybe though. 

There’s a lot of people complaining about what happened last year and in years past. I grew up with seasons tickets. From the time I turned probably 10, my mom said she would never go to another Leaf or Canadiens game. Pittsburgh also used to be an issue. This just isn’t anything new. 

[JohnC]

1 minute ago, dudacek said:

 

It’s not hard to understand: we don’t have a problem with Leaf fans in our building, we have a problem with them taking over the building and ruining our in-game experience.

We are powerless to prevent it and appreciate that the team is taking steps to protect us.

Ive explained why “ice a better team” is overly simplistic upthread and I’m not going to repeat myself.

It seems as if they are taking over the building when they outplay the Sabres. It arouses their fans in attendance. When the Sabres outplay the Leafs, regardless how many Leaf fans are in the arena, our fans then dominate the subdued opposing fans. The notion that the opposing fans are dominating a building is not as much of an issue of in-game experience as how the home team is playing. There are plenty of games when the Sabres are playing poorly and the fans are either somnolent or exasperated. That's the real source of problems associated with bad in-game experience. It's a function of how the team is playing. 

[Randall Flagg]

23 minutes ago, JohnC said:

It seems as if they are taking over the building when they outplay the Sabres. It arouses their fans in attendance. When the Sabres outplay the Leafs, regardless how many Leaf fans are in the arena, our fans then dominate the subdued opposing fans. The notion that the opposing fans are dominating a building is not as much of an issue of in-game experience as how the home team is playing. There are plenty of games when the Sabres are playing poorly and the fans are either somnolent or exasperated. That's the real source of problems associated with bad in-game experience. It's a function of how the team is playing. 

This has not been my experience. There are almost no Sabres fans in many sections. This phenomenon happens to a degree that it significantly impacts my enjoyment as a fan at the game, in a way that I would only expect if I was a cowboys fan heading to Philly for a road game. That the players also hate this and sense it from the drop of the puck just makes it a slam dunk issue to try and improve 

[CallawaySabres]

My favorite games of the season are Leafs games because it's the only time the atmosphere is through the roof. Now that game where 80% of the fans were Boston and they curb stomped us, that was the most depressing game I have ever attended.

[Derrico]

2 hours ago, JohnC said:

It seems as if they are taking over the building when they outplay the Sabres. It arouses their fans in attendance. When the Sabres outplay the Leafs, regardless how many Leaf fans are in the arena, our fans then dominate the subdued opposing fans. The notion that the opposing fans are dominating a building is not as much of an issue of in-game experience as how the home team is playing. There are plenty of games when the Sabres are playing poorly and the fans are either somnolent or exasperated. That's the real source of problems associated with bad in-game experience. It's a function of how the team is playing. 

Right?!  Leafs didn’t jump out to a 4-0 first period lead last year because there were ‘too many’ leaf fans.  They jumped out to the lead because UPL couldn’t stop a ***** beach ball that night and got pulled for Anderson.  Pretty even game after the goalie change.

Leads me back to my frustration of not addressing goaltending this off-season.  Obviously a discussion for another thread. 

[JohnC]

39 minutes ago, Derrico said:

Right?!  Leafs didn’t jump out to a 4-0 first period lead last year because there were ‘too many’ leaf fans.  They jumped out to the lead because UPL couldn’t stop a ***** beach ball that night and got pulled for Anderson.  Pretty even game after the goalie change.

Leads me back to my frustration of not addressing goaltending this off-season.  Obviously a discussion for another thread. 

I remember when there was an outside game in Canada against Toronto. Our team was decisively beating Toronto. The Toronto fans were silenced and walked out of the stadium before the game was concluded. As you point out, how the team plays is the most influential reason as to how the fans respond. 

I would rather have our arena filled to capacity with half or more of the crowd boisterously rooting for Toronto than have a half empty arena filled with Sabre fans who are snoozing throughout most of the game because of the uninspired play on the ice. 

The customers who buy tickets and root for the team that they want. I would rather have seats filled than not.