Team’s woes mean tickets are cheaper
If you wanted to buy tickets to Wednesday’s Canucks-Coyotes game for $20 ... well, you know there’s a reason why this sentence started this way.
A search of various U.S.-based online ticket resellers showed plenty of tickets available for what in the past might have been absurdly low prices. On StubHub, tickets could be found for US$13. Do the exchange and add in the service charge, and you could still end up paying less for your tickets than you would for two beers and a hotdog.
Even the Canucks’ official ticketresale site, Ticketmaster’s Tickets Now service, had tickets for as low as $30. Even lower-bowl tickets could be had for $80 or so.
“Prices have never been this low,” said Kingsley Bailey, manager of ticket brokers Vancouver Ticket. The cheapest ticket available through his company, depending on the game, is $30-$50 right now. “These numbers are on par with when Mike Keenan was in charge.”
That would be in the late 1990s. Bailey said it’s been an up-anddown year, with interest starting well at the beginning of the season, then dipping while the team struggled, but surging during a pair of stretches where the team was playing well at home.
But now that star rookie Brock Boeser’s season has come to a sudden halt, so has interest.
“We have no Brock Boeser and that’s what fans were looking for,” he said.
Not selling tickets isn’t good for business, but Bailey said he’s trying to take a look on the bright side. Not only was the sun shining outside his window Wednesday, but he figured there’s a chance to win new clients in all this. “I’ve got some positives: We got some future fans who might not have been able to go (to a Canucks game) before. They ’ll have some fun and I’ll have helped them get there.”