Sunday night’s Week 18 matchup between the Minnesota Vikings And Detroit Lions could very well be the best in NFL regular season historyfeaturing two teams with 14-2 records – the most wins combined in a non-playoff game.
With a No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs and a first-round bye on the line, the Vikings are spending considerable resources to ensure they have strong fan representation at Ford Field in Detroit. To be exact, the team spent almost $2 million.
Before Sunday’s game, the Vikings purchased about 1,900 tickets at Lions Stadium on the secondary market at about $1,000 per ticket, according to Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated. The team then offered its season ticket holders the opportunity via email to purchase the seats at a much lower price – some of them for as little as $200 per ticket.
The Lions noticed the activity and discovered the email from the Vikings offering their season ticket base “the opportunity to purchase lower tier seats for Sunday night’s game.” Primarily located behind the visiting team’s bench at Ford Field, tickets were offered on a first-come, first-served basis.
Additionally, Minnesota said the tickets were “intended for use by Vikings fans and not for resale.”
However, ticket buyers being ticket buyers, the idea of fair play was not followed by all buyers, as Breer detailed.
“One ticket holder sold his seat on the secondary market for $724. The buyer then turned around and sold the ticket to Advantage Tickets, a company the Vikings worked with, for $1,200,” he said. he writes. “The Vikings then sold the ticket to a season ticket holder for $300. The season ticket holder, in turn, sold it on the secondary market for $690. This buyer was potentially a broker, since the ticket is back on the market.
The path of this particular ticket caught the attention of the Lions and the team contacted the NFL to report what the Vikings were doing. Still, the league said Minnesota did not violate any rules by doing so, Breer reported.
The Vikings insist they intended to give players’ and staff’s families a better vantage point – and perhaps more opportunities to influence crowd noise near their sideline – by purchasing seats beyond the approximately 600 seats generally made available on the route. team.
“Given the unique nature of this game, we wanted to provide our stakeholders – staff, family, season ticket members and team partners – an opportunity to attend,” said Vikings spokesman Jeff Anderson, in a statement to SI.
Will 2,000 fans make a difference among the 65,000-capacity Ford Field likely to be filled mostly with roaring Lions fans cheering their team to earn its first-ever No. 1 playoff seed and a hopeful first step toward the franchise’s first Super Bowl appearance? Maybe not.
However, the Vikings’ willingness to pay significant amounts of money to give their fans (or “stakeholders”) a presence in what is arguably the most important road game in team history is certainly notable. Admirable, even considering the NFL claims no rules were broken with this move.
The Lions defeated the Vikings at US Bank Stadium in Week 7, 31-29on a 44 yard Jake Bates basket with 19 seconds left.
