Sabres ticket sales still pretty dismal

[HOUSE]

Pretty empty last night, no line for beer

[LabattBlue]

ESPN boxscore listed paid attendance at…

 

12,598

Edited October 18, 2023 by LabattBlue

[Two or less]

10 hours ago, Brawndo said:

They did a comparison on WGR this AM between the second home game of the season and last. The second home game last year was a Saturday Night against Florida and last night’s game had approximately 3000 more tickets sold 

Jeremy White made a point that the attendance last night beats every October game of last year that wasn't the opener.

[Taro T]

1 hour ago, LabattBlue said:

ESPN boxscore listed paid attendance at…

 

12,598

Still say about 9k of those actually showed up.

Good that it was over 12k paid.  If the Sabres are there the 2nd week of the season, they'll get a fair amount of sellouts when the Bills season finally ends around the 1st of February.

[PromoTheRobot]

20 hours ago, Taro T said:

 

Unless it's a sellout, or close to one, they've been very reluctant in recent years to give the attendance figure while people are at the game.  Box scores used to give the paid attendance, maybe they still do.  (Haven't looked that closely at one in a long time.)  So, answers to your Q's would be: 1. a win in OT; 2. No; 3. No data but the 10-11k sold is a reasonable guess as a lot of seats that are probably held by STHers were empty.  Personally, estimated the actual attendance at somewhere between 8-9k.  (Just a smidge below 50% full.)

I base my estimates on the Ticketmaster seating charts. How many blue dots (unsold seats) are there? For the Lightning game, more than half the upper deck was unsold.

One huge change you see now, are very few pink dots (resale tickets.) When there were more season ticket holders, they were dumping tickets for $6. People got used to paying those prices. Now you're paying box office prices. Sticker shock.

[SABRES 0311]

Sabres fans are in full fool me once, fool me twice mode. We stuck with this franchise through a lot more suffering than even Darcy probably anticipated. 

I’m surprised ticket sales are as good as they are.

[Zamboni]

I was at the Calgary game, and my eyeball estimation puts the attendances at 11 to 12 thousand.

[zow2]

Please sell the team Terry.  Lift whatever curse followed you to the Sabres and get back to the glorious hockey town and playoff contender we always used to be.

[HOUSE]

I was at the game too, I say 10,000 max

This was not a happy crowd leaving  the game either...

Low murmur  ...

Edited October 20, 2023 by Shoot da Puck

[Getpucksdeep]

1 minute ago, Shoot da Puck said:

I was at the game too, I say 10,000 max

Official was just over 13k which feels/looks right compared to Tampa.  For a Oct Thurs against meh opponent kinda not bad.

Calgary fans were fewer than Rags and much less obnoxious.  

[HOUSE]

11 minutes ago, Getpucksdeep said:

Official was just over 13k which feels/looks right compared to Tampa.  For a Oct Thurs against meh opponent kinda not bad.

Calgary fans were fewer than Rags and much less obnoxious.  

You know it's hard, so many fans show up late, than the fans who leave early. The people next to me did both. Must be nice to throw money away like that 😒 

[Stoner]

19 minutes ago, Getpucksdeep said:

Official was just over 13k which feels/looks right compared to Tampa.  For a Oct Thurs against meh opponent kinda not bad.

Calgary fans were fewer than Rags and much less obnoxious.  

It's bad.

Official is tickets sold.

[Getpucksdeep]

39 minutes ago, PASabreFan said:

It's bad.

Official is tickets sold.

Yeah no it sucks it's not full every night, just sayin compared to last year.  Next for me is on Monday vs Montreal, I expect that to be maybe 12k and 50/50 split in rooting interests.  

[WhenWillItEnd66]

Home product on the ice is the same product we have seen the last few years. They are easily pushed around and play scared at home. They try to be too pretty instead of just playing hockey and shooting the damn puck. They do not ever defend in front of their own net and are chicken to crash the other teams net. You can have all the skill you want, but if you do not play the basics of hockey you are not going to win much. Fans do not want to pay crazy prices to watch their home team lose night after night. 

[Pimlach]

53 minutes ago, Getpucksdeep said:

Yeah no it sucks it's not full every night, just sayin compared to last year.  Next for me is on Monday vs Montreal, I expect that to be maybe 12k and 50/50 split in rooting interests.  

Monday will feel like a road game. 
 

Granato should play UPL/Comrie vs Isles and save Levi for the division games vs Montreal and Ottawa.  

[matter2003]

51 minutes ago, Stormcloudmember66 said:

Home product on the ice is the same product we have seen the last few years. They are easily pushed around and play scared at home. They try to be too pretty instead of just playing hockey and shooting the damn puck. They do not ever defend in front of their own net and are chicken to crash the other teams net. You can have all the skill you want, but if you do not play the basics of hockey you are not going to win much. Fans do not want to pay crazy prices to watch their home team lose night after night. 

 

When you have the 5th worst record in the NHL at home last year and the only 4 teams beneath you are the 4 worst teams in the NHL(ANA, CLB, CHI and SJS) that are more than 30 points below you in the standings, it's a major issue.  There is no excuse for it.  They are clearly better than that. One of the best road teams in the league but can't play at home? WTF is that?

 

 

[mjd1001]

Most of us agree on this topic.  

The team is still in a 'prove it to us' mode. They had a sellout opening night. If they won and put up 5+ goals I'm pretty sure that would have helped the attendance the next couple games. That didn't happen though.

This team needs to be in playoff contention all the time. The WORST case scenario for fans wanting to see this team is for them to, after a week or two into the season, for them to be near the bottom of the standings looking up, AND not scoring.  They are 2 for 2 on both of those.

They can't be 'chasing' in the standings. if they were to make the playoffs with 100 points, for attendance you want them to start fast and maybe fade a bit to get to those 100 points rather than start slow and catch up at the end.

They have played 4 games of average/boring/low scoring hockey were they have been playing mostly from behind.  They need to play the next 4 games of high scoring/playing with the lead, mostly winning just to for the fans to get back to the excitement they had before the opener.

[Drag0nDan]

On 10/19/2023 at 8:44 AM, PromoTheRobot said:

I base my estimates on the Ticketmaster seating charts. How many blue dots (unsold seats) are there? For the Lightning game, more than half the upper deck was unsold.

One huge change you see now, are very few pink dots (resale tickets.) When there were more season ticket holders, they were dumping tickets for $6. People got used to paying those prices. Now you're paying box office prices. Sticker shock.

My buddy is a ticket broker, and another broker who used to work for the Sabres would buy... a ton of seats and re-sell them.  The key was because he was doing such volume that the Sabres were basically selling them for 30 cents on the dollar.   That guy lists them - probably makes money on some, and on others he'd just dump them for the minimum.  I forget the name of the guy the Sabres fired, but after that they adjusted their ticket model considerably and stopped giving seats away. 

It really de-valued the product at the end of the day, and people were shocked when they couldn't pick up a ticket for 10 bucks on the day of.  Also thousands of season tickets opened up mysteriously at the same time.  

[sabremike]

28 minutes ago, matter2003 said:

 

 One of the best road teams in the league but can't play at home? WTF is that?

 

 

C-O-A-C-H-I-N-G

[Curt]

On 10/18/2023 at 12:16 PM, Taro T said:

 

Unless it's a sellout, or close to one, they've been very reluctant in recent years to give the attendance figure while people are at the game.  Box scores used to give the paid attendance, maybe they still do.  (Haven't looked that closely at one in a long time.)  So, answers to your Q's would be: 1. a win in OT; 2. No; 3. No data but the 10-11k sold is a reasonable guess as a lot of seats that are probably held by STHers were empty.  Personally, estimated the actual attendance at somewhere between 8-9k.  (Just a smidge below 50% full.)

Attendance reported in box score is 13,025.

[Gatorman0519]

Monday will be 14,000 with 8000 MTL fans. 

[Thorner]

3 minutes ago, Gatorman0519 said:

Monday will be 14,000 with 8000 MTL fans. 

I’ll always sports hate Montreal the most/top 3. Inherited grudge. We will win that game because we have to 

[HOUSE]

I am boycotting home games, I have my pride 

[Two or less]

Saturday doesnt even look that good.

 

[Porous Five Hole]

This is not a Buffalo problem.  Attendance is down league-wide. 
 

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/sports/nhl/several-nhl-teams-already-struggling-with-attendance/ar-AA1iwBWn?ocid=msedgntp&pc=ACTS&cvid=70cf165d6d654fd18ae558dd7c493fb2&ei=25

 

A couple notes:

-The Caps sellout steak of 588 games ended this week. 
-Calgary & Winnipeg didn’t sell out their home opener. 
-San Jose only had 10k in their building this week. 
 

Buffalo has had October & November attendance problems throughout the drought. This isn’t new.