FOCUS: BILLS SEASON TICKETS
Season-ticket buyers are filling up The Ralph
Despite a nine-year playoff drought, the Bills are on a pace to sell 55,000 season tickets, which would be their third-highest total ever.
Published: June 23, 2009, 12:30 am
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To paraphrase sportscaster Chris Berman, nobody circles the wagons like Buffalo Bills season-ticket sellers. Despite nine years out of the National Football League playoffs, widespread grumbling about the coaching staff and a tough economy, the Bills are on track to sell about 55,000 season tickets this year. That would rank as the third-highest in the team’s 50-year history.
The Bills already have sold 53,048 season tickets, with almost two months left until the first home preseason game.
Team officials believe they have a shot at matching last season’s total of 56,011, second only to the 57,132 sold in 1992.
After the disappointing end to the 2008 season, there was widespread speculation that the Bills would face a major task in selling anywhere close to last year’s total.
Group tickets went on sale to the public Saturday. The Bills already have sold out the first four of their seven regular-season games in Orchard Park, and fewer than 3,000 tickets remain for the Miami game Nov. 29.
The only games with substantial tickets available are for normally popular opponents New England and Indianapolis, in December and January, respectively.
The team fully expects a sold-out season. “We feel we have a solid game plan,” Chief
Operating Officer Russ Brandon said of the team’s ticket-selling and marketing efforts. “It’s a strong foundation, but we never take that foundation for granted.”
Because of the Bills’ relatively low prices for tickets and premium seats, the team has to be “hitting on every cylinder” in its sales efforts to get the revenue it needs, Brandon said.
“We have to hit it out of the park each and every year,” Brandon added during an interview late last week.
If the Bills can sell 55,000 season tickets after nine straight years out of the playoffs, how many could they sell if the team becomes a legitimate contender?
“We’re really on the cusp of being able to sell out season tickets in the not-too-distant future,” said David H. Wheat, senior vice president of business operations.
That probably means 60,000 tickets, leaving about 11,000 tickets available for group and individual sales in Ralph Wilson Stadium.
Bills officials say the successful ticket sales reflect several factors:
• The continuing passion that Bills fans have for their team.
• The key inroads the team has made in regionalizing the franchise, especially into the Rochester area and Southern Ontario, which together make up more than 20 percent of the team’s season-ticket base.
• Renewed interest in the on-field product, fed largely by the signing of wide receiver Terrell Owens and what seems like a strong 2009 draft class.
• Keeping ticket prices affordable by not raising them in the off-season. The team’s weighted average ticket price remains $51.24, believed to be the least expensive in the NFL.
• Concerted efforts to woo a strong and faithful season-ticket base, an initiative that began in earnest a decade ago, after the Bills had sold only 31,141 season tickets in 1998.
“The strategy clearly had to change, and it had to change for the benefit of the season-ticket holder,” Brandon said.
Ticket sales are the good news. On the down side, the Bills still have quite a few unsold suites and club seats.
Just under 1,000 of the team’s 8,676 club seats remain unsold, along with 12 to 15 of its 164 luxury boxes.
“You’re certainly not satisfied when you have any inventory available,” Brandon said. “We will work hard as an organization to get through that. It’s certainly a product of the economic challenges everyone faces.”
The team, though, is buoyed by season- ticket sales to its Southern Ontario audience, considered one of the reasons for beginning the Bills-in-Toronto partnership last season.
The Bills sold 2,683 season tickets in Southern Ontario in 2004. That number climbed to 6,834 last season, a 155 percent jump over four years. And that figure is expected to increase again this year, with the help of the team’s increased exposure in Southern Ontario, where the Bills will play one game this season.
Team officials would not comment on the possibility that the Bills could move a second regular-season game to Toronto, starting next season, as Rogers Communications officials have favored.
“It really has not been a conversation piece,” Brandon said. “It’s at ground zero, because we’ve been focusing on the current partnership we have.”
Brandon acknowledged that officials throughout the Bills organization were sincerely disappointed with the 7-9 record that kept the team out of the playoffs again last season.
Team officials heard the off-season grousing from fans. But they were determined to improve the on-field performance and continue their strong marketing efforts.
“We are a roll-up-your-sleeves and how-can-we-improve type of organization, and that’s not lip service,” Brandon said.
The result was a renewal rate of about 82 percent from their seasonticket holders, perhaps a slightly lower rate than normal.
Brandon would not hazard a guess on how much the Owens signing helped season-ticket sales, although outsiders have speculated that it was crucial.
The Bills do say that the Owens signing, the positive buzz over the Bills’ draft in April and the other off-season moves seem to have been factors.
“We’re in the football business, and we have a very knowledgeable, savvy fan base,” Brandon said.
He and others point to the higher priority that the team has given season- ticket holders since 1998. A decade ago, the Bills provided virtually no perks for their season-ticket holders.
The Bills now now provide discounts to season-ticket holders, roughly 10 percent off the individual game price. They also may buy group tickets and individual game seats before the general public. And the team provides other benefits, such as the draft-day party.
“We immediately said we needed to make it more attractive to be a seasonticket holder,” Wheat said, and they did so.
gwarner@buffnews.com
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