Secondary market Canucks ticket sales dipping

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – The bandwagon in Vancouver seems a lot lighter if you look at the kind of bargains out there for Canucks tickets. Secondary market demand for tickets is coming at an interesting time as the team looks ahead at prices for next season.

The cheap seats have been selling through brokers and online at around $30. Even at that price, there were leftovers. It was a week night, but there was recently a time when there would be a butt in every seat in Rogers Arena when the Canucks were in town.

Kingsley Bailey with Vancouver ticket says they’re going to have to cut back on the amount of inventory they buy from season ticket holders. “They want to sell off half the games and of the half of games, there might only be five or six games that are good. Now we’re going to try and be selective and only take the good games because the stuff that’s not that demanding of a game, those are the seats that you see going for $30-$40 each.”

There are plenty of seats still left for tomorrow’s home game against the San Jose Sharks, really good ones at face value. Canucks COO Victor de Bonis says there are on average about 400 unsold seats for home games. “Some games there’s less than that, but there are games where there’s a couple hundred pairs that we donate to kids in community groups.”

He says this is the time of year when they look at whether ticket pricing should change. “We look very closely obviously at our market, the economy, the cost of running the club, the salary cap and a host of other factors. We’ll have a firm idea soon.”