The Buffalo Sabres are planning on having fans in the KeyBank Center by the end of this week. They have announced that March 20th against the Boston Bruins will be the first game fans are allowed. The Sabres have not had fans in KeyBank center for a hockey game since before the COVID-19 pandemic began.
The KeyBank Center will be able to hold 10% capacity for the game on March 20th, which makes 1,907 tickets available for fans. Given that there are regularly thousands of season ticket holders for the Sabres, those tickets would have been sold rather quickly, right? Well, you’d be wrong to think that.
Buffalo announced a few days ago that they would allow the general public to purchase tickets for this Saturday’s game against Boston. This means that they could not sell 1,907 tickets to season ticket holders. If that isn’t a sign of fans being fed up with the Sabers’ recent incompetence, I am not sure what is.
According to John Vogl of The Athletic, as of yesterday, there are still 512 tickets available for the game, which means they have only sold 1,395 tickets so far. He also mentioned that some frontline workers received free tickets, which means that the number of tickets sold is less than 1,395.
There are 223 seats available in the 100 Level, 204 for sale in the 200 Level and 85 in the 300s.
— John Vogl (@BuffaloVogl) March 13, 2021
Some frontline workers have tweeted they were offered free tickets, so the actual sale number may be lower than 1,395.
If the Sabres fail to sell the just over 1,900 tickets they made available for this game, not only is that incredibly sad, but it shows that the fans are sick and tired of how this team is performing. The front office should see this issue of selling so little tickets for the first game with fans in over a year as a giant red flag.
I cannot imagine that ticket sales would amount to much of anything if this season were played under normal circumstances, with Buffalo playing the way they are. Obviously, they would be selling more than 2,000 tickets per game if they could operate at full capacity, but I cannot imagine this team producing anything close to a sell-out.