Canucks have cannibalized interest, StubHub says
The Vancouver Sun – June 8, 2011
A bout of bad scheduling luck for the UFC means good news for local fight fans looking for cheap tickets to Saturday’s UFC 131 card at Rogers Arena.
The combination of the Canucks’ run to the Stanley Cup Final, the absence of original headliner Brock Lesnar and the lack of a major Canadian presence on the card has depressed ticket prices in the week before fight night.
“It’s certainly not typical, this is one of the lowest priced UFC events,” said Glenn Lehrman, the head of communications for the popular ticket resale site StubHub. “It’s a great deal to go to a UFC fight.”
He said that Friday night’s Game 5 of the Canucks-Bruins series cannibalized both ticket sales and interest in the event.
Lesnar, the scheduled co-headliner, withdrew from the card last month because of illness. He was replaced by lesser-known Shane Carwin, who now takes on Brazilian Junior dos Santos in the headline bout.
Three Canadians will step into the cage on Saturday night, but none will be featured on the pay-per-view portion of the card.
Lehrman estimated the average ticket price for UFC 131 at $177. He said that figure could drop even further in the hours before the event with many tickets still available through both official and re-sale sites.
“Tickets are a commodity that expire and people don’t want to get stuck getting nothing,” he said.
StubHub had more than 1,200 tickets available for the event as of Tuesday afternoon.
Pairs of upper deck seats -with a face value of $100.50 per ticket -could be had for as little as $30 each. Many more similarly located seats were available for between $40 and $50.
The cheapest available floor seats were priced at $250 on the site, but have a face value of $683.50.
As of Tuesday afternoon, official ticket vendor Ticketmaster had seats available at every price level including floor seats as close as the sixth row.
Craigslist hosted more than 1,000 posts from people looking to buy or sell tickets.
A pair of cage-side seats with a face value of just under $1,400 was selling for $820 on the popular site yesterday afternoon. Pairs of seats in the lower bowl could be found on sale for a little over half of the $533.50 advertised face value.
Vancouver hosted UFC 115 in June of last year. The event became one of the quickest sellouts in UFC history, with all tickets purchased within 30 minutes of being released.
Organizers sold 14,621 tickets with a total attendance of 17,669 including luxury suites and giveaways.
As originally published in The Vancouver Sun