Pittsburgh Penguins fans aren’t exactly known to be the most loyal.
I mean, sure — they have a set of loyal fans who have been around rooting for the team their whole lives, as all teams do. But we all know about how the city’s general lack of support for the Penguins almost forced relocation to greener pastures, like Kansas City (lol).
The Philadelphia Flyers have never had such problems. Even in 2006-07, when the Flyers were the worst team in hockey, the Flyers sold 98.9 percent of their seats at the then-Wachovia Center. The Penguins, by comparison in the same season, sold 96.9 percent of their seats at Mellon Arena — in what was Evgeni Malkin’s highly-hyped rookie year and the sophomore season of Sidney Crosby. Can’t even beat the Flyers under those circumstances, huh?
So yeah, Flyers fans are clearly more supportive of their team than Penguins fans. That’s been proven by the test of time, and it’s something that carries through even today.
Let’s look at Thursday night’s Battle of Pennsylvania game in Pittsburgh, the first game between the two teams in 291 days. One would expect this game to have been sold out months ago, right? It’s probably one of the hottest tickets in Pittsburgh … right? It’d be impossible to grab seats for two or three people when we’re just 26 hours from puck drop ……. right????
I did a quick search on the Pens’ website and uhhhh … hey, do you have four friends who want to go to Pittsburgh with you tomorrow? You can get lower level seats directly from the team for face value!
Aw wait, you have five other friends who wanna go too? Damn, that’s a shame. No way that will happe– oh, wait? Really? You can get 10 tickets for this game? And all the seats are together?
Yep.
That’s pathetic, Pittsburgh.
All in all, using the “buy on map” feature that lets you see every seat in the building, I count 174 tickets still available in the lower level and 93 tickets available in the upper level. 267 tickets might not sound like a lot, and indeed it really isn’t. But these aren’t tickets on StubHub. These are tickets that haven’t even been purchased from the team yet, and the game is barely a day away.
And 267 is a lot when when you compare it to the same situation in Philadelphia.
The Flyers don’t host the Penguins until March 19. That’s still two months away. I went and did the same count for tickets via the Flyers website for that game. There are 10 available in the 100 level and 24 available in the mezzanine.
34 tickets, total. You can find more than 34 tickets available in just Section 120 of Consol Energy Center for tomorrow’s game in Pittsburgh.
Now, in full disclosure — there are 79 tickets available in the club level of the Wells Fargo Center for that March 19 game. Even adding those tickets into the total, you still have just 113 tickets available in the whole building, compared to the 267 in Pittsburgh for a game that’s a day away.
Also consider the caveat that a) there are 1,000 extra seats at the Wells Fargo Center vs. the Consol Energy Center, and that’s mostly due to the fact that the WFC has a big club level and CEC does not, and b) club level tickets in Philly start at $212 per seat and c) the Philly game is 58 damn days away and it will probably be sold out before the end of January.
I can’t really think of a good excuse for Penguins fans as to why they haven’t sold out this game yet. Then again, Pittsburgh hasn’t won a hockey game against Philadelphia in 825 days, so it’s understandable that they might be a little fatigued.
