The 2010 Winter Classic at Fenway Park has quickly become one of the hottest tickets in the history of Boston sports.
Out of the three Winter Classics held so far, the historic event set for Friday at Fenway has dwarfed the other games in Buffalo (2008) and Chicago (2009) in terms of demand for access to tickets.
According to Don Renzulli, the executive vice president of events for the NHL, the number of entries into the lottery for tickets to the 2010 Winter Classic was up over 70,000 from 2009.
“I would say it’s greater. From what we are hearing, especially from the Bruins and Red Sox, the phone is ringing off the hook,” Renzulli told USA Today on Nov. 16. “Everyone is playing an angle trying to get tickets. We had more than 307,000 people sign up for our lottery for tickets. [That's up more than 70,000 from last year.] There is a lot of buzz up there. We were there last week and we met with the city, fire and police officials and they are saying this is the biggest thing that has come to Boston outside of Game 7 of the World Series.”
There ended up being more than 310,000 entries into the lottery by the time it ended. In addition to the lottery, both the Bruins and Flyers season ticket holders were given the option to buy tickets, and according to one Bruins ticket office member, those sold out in a hurry as well.
Between the lottery, season ticket holder sales and corporate tickets, the Winter Classic will have a sold-out crowd of 40,000 on hand for the game on Friday. Though the game has sold out, it doesn’t mean fans have stopped trying to get in. There are always contests giving away tickets, and ticket broker agencies and scalpers who will gladly let you mortgage away next month’s utility bills to get into Fenway Park on Friday.
While prices are dropping a bit due to possible rain and a slight chance the game could be postponed until Saturday if it were to rain, it is still difficult to find anything for face value.
Take a peek on Craigslist.com and on average, prices are still above face value. But on the streets, Bruins tickets are selling for prices not seen since the old Boston Garden was standing and Bruins vice president Cam Neely was lacing them up.
“I haven’t seen anything like this since the late 80s or early 90s, when Neely and Bourque played and the team was always a Cup contender,” one scalper told NESN.com recently. “I got $400 for crummy grandstand seats in right field. Its unbelievable people are paying the prices they’re paying. It’s like the Beatles reunited and George Harrison and John Lennon came back from the dead or something. They are definitely paying top dollar.”
As this scalper pointed out, the fact that clear sight lines are limited due to this being a baseball park hasn’t stopped the demand.
“I think it’s like one of those events like I said, an historic concert, the World Series or the Super Bowl, where you go just to say you were there and to take in the environment,” the scalper said. “It’s more about the event and the magnitude or hype surrounding it.”
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The 2010 Winter Classic at Fenway Park has quickly become one of the hottest Tixx in the history of Boston sports.
Boston Bruins Hold Winter Classic Breakfast For Season Ticket Holders
Held in the State Street Pavilion overlooking the field, attendees were treated to a continental breakfast as NHL Executive Vice President Brian Jennings and NBC coordinating producer Sam Flood led presentations about the event, the festivities surrounding it, and NBC’s television coverage.
Fans were able to walk outside and see the construction in progress on the field. Between the beginning and end of the breakfast, the north end boards were put in place.
Jennings and Bruins Senior Vice President Amy Lattimer spoke to the crowd about the reasons that the third Winter Classic for tickets click here came to Boston. Jennings delivered a lengthy presentation elaborating on the success of last year’s event at Chicago’s Wrigley Field. Flood’s presentation was much shorter, as he concentrated on the ways that NBC attempts to engage hockey fans with its broadcast.
“We knew our fans would be the first to sit outside in any degrees in this city, to cheer on the Bruins, no matter who they were playing,” Lattimer said, addressing the league’s choice of the Philadelphia Flyers, who are not a traditional rival of the Bruins as an opponent. Jennings and Flood cited the size of the two markets – the fourth and fifth-largest media markets in the United States – as a key reason for the matchup.
“We want to show up bigger than we’ve ever shown up before,” Jennings told the assembly, noting that the 2009 Winter Classic was the most-watched regular season game in over 30 years, with 72,000 attendees and 5.6 million television viewers. The game also brought 1.1 million visitors to NHL.com.
Dating back to the first Winter Classic in Buffalo in 2008, the game has always been a success, but the league has not always been sure that it has done everything right. Jennings told a story where tickets for that game went on sale at 10 AM on the morning of a Board of Governors meeting, and were sold out at 10:20. He sent an email to NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and deputy commissioner Bill Daly, asking if they’d want to share the good news with the owners before the 11 AM meeting.
According to Jennings, Bettman responded, “Did we price it the right way?” prompting a response of “Typical Bettman!” from a gentleman in the back of the crowd.
While Chicago generated a lot of interest for the 2009 game, with 240,000 people having entered a lottery to win the right to purchase tickets, Boston put that number to shame, with over 310,000 fans hoping to see their heroes play outdoors.
“We wanted a market where we could make sure we would be successful,” Jennings added. “We recognized very early that Fenway was the right location.”
“There are thousands of hockey games every year,” Flood said, “but only one Winter Classic. It’s the only game every year with an airplane flying overhead to do replays.” Flood also noted that a new clause exists in NBC staple Bob Costas’ contract, one that stipulates that he gets the privilege to host NBC’s coverage of the event every year.
NBC will promote the game by cutting live to Fenway Park during the closing minutes of its December 27 broadcast of Football Night in America, before the Dallas Cowboys take on the Washington Redskins at FedEx Field.
Jennings and Flood also stressed the importance of the league’s many partners in putting on a show of this magnitude. During the game broadcast, Reebok will debut a new commercial featuring Sidney Crosby and Maxime Talbot of the Pittsburgh Penguins. Bridgestone, Geico, Honda, McDonald’s, Anheuser-Busch, and Pepsi, among others, were also noted as supporters of the game. These companies will each have a presence at a spectator plaza that will be open on the day of the game, to ticket holders and non-ticket holders alike.
Other events include a New Year’s Eve party at the House of Blues across the street from the ballpark, a January 2 legends game that will be shown on NESN sometime in the future, open skates on the Fenway Park ice on January 3 and 10, and the January 8 college hockey doubleheader, between the men’s teams of Boston University and Boston College and the women’s teams of the University of New Hampshire and Northeastern University.
Jennings also hinted that the Dropkick Murphys will perform the national anthem at the game, although nothing has been announced as of yet.
While Bruins principal Charlie Jacobs, vice president Cam Neely, and general manager Peter Chiarelli were not in attendance due to the league’s Board of Governors meeting, former Bruins John Bucyk and Bob Sweeney were. Fans swarmed Bucyk after the presentations, taking photos and asking for autographs from “The Chief.”
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