No season ticket for the new Bills stadium? You may be shut out
If you don't have season tickets at the new Buffalo Bills stadium, you probably won't be able to buy tickets for individual games next season unless you turn to the secondary market.
It won't be easy to buy single-game tickets at the box office of the Buffalo Bills' new stadium.
The Bills are getting very close to selling out their new stadium set to open next season in Orchard Park.
And it will essentially be season ticket holders who occupy just about every seat at the new Highmark Stadium, leaving fewer options for the sale of individual tickets aside from paying the often much higher prices on the secondary market.
Seats at the new Highmark Stadium will be occupied mainly by season ticket holders after the sale of personal seat licenses.
Harry Scull Jr., Buffalo News
The Bills plan to sell 54,628 seat licenses in the 60,108-seat stadium and are now likely only a few thousand seats away from wrapping up that process.
And that will leave few seats for sale at the box office for individual game purchases. Here's why.
If the team succeeds in selling out its PSLs, there will be fewer than 5,500 seats left in the new stadium.
Of those, the Bills are required to set aside 3,725 as “mandatory holds” for visiting teams, the NFL and Bills players’ families and staff and as “sponsor holds” for the Bills’ founding partners.
Combine that with the 1,755 seats that make up the team’s suite and loge inventory, which do not require a PSL, and that accounts for every seat in the new stadium. The suites are sold out.
That means every seat at the team’s $2.2 billion stadium will be spoken for, so individual ticket sales through the Bills box office may become a thing of the past.
The Bills have talked about having a standing area in the new stadium that could accommodate at least a few thousand fans, but the team will not discuss that availability yet as they try to first sell out their dwindling stock of seat licenses, which are a one-time fee required for fans to be able to purchase season tickets.
It makes being a season ticket holder at the new stadium even more critical in having access to attend future Bills games.
There’s already high demand for season tickets at the Bills' new stadium with the team being a recurring playoff contender. Combine that with the reduced capacity of the new stadium, which will have more than 10,000 fewer seats than the current Highmark Stadium, means that individual game tickets may be few and far between. There may be even less stock on the secondary market, as well.
Individual game tickets already are relatively scarce at the box office at the current Highmark Stadium, even though it has 71,608 seats. With the Bills expanding their season ticket holder base to around 65,000, that leaves only a few thousand individual game tickets for the team to sell.
Every time the Bills have cut down on seats at their current stadium, it has impacted prices and availability, said Nick Giammusso, president and CEO of Buffalo-based event ticket reseller VIPTix.
Over the years, the seating capacity has been reduced at the current stadium from a high of around 80,200 due to renovations that added more suites and club seats.
“Some of the fans I’ve talked to are fearful they’re going to be priced out of the new stadium, and that seems to be their biggest fear, even more than missing out on seeing the team in the last year of the current stadium,” Giammusso said.
Seat licenses were 89% sold through by the end of September, according to the team’s report that was recently released by the state.
And that number has likely climbed significantly over the past month and a half as the Bills get deeper into selling PSLs to fans who have been on the waitlist – some for over two years. It probably leaves only a few thousand seat licenses currently left for the team to sell.
The team also has seen a dramatic uptick in the revenue from the sale of seat licenses. PSLs have raised nearly $245 million for the Bills, as of Sept. 30, and all that money will go toward stadium construction and does not have to be shared leaguewide.
Waitlisters began to get their chance at buying seats in September. Current season ticket holders had until Sept. 19 to pick from the remaining inventory at the new stadium.
There’s been thousands of fans who have dropped deposits to be on the waiting list, representing the potential for more than 20,000 seats at the new stadium, the Bills have said.
That likely means a substantial amount of those interested fans will not wind up with season tickets.
The secondary market will become an even larger factor for fans trying to get Bills home game tickets at the new stadium and prices could be extremely expensive, especially in the first couple of seasons when the stock is low and people are trying to recoup some of their seat license expense.
“You’ve got less tickets that will be available,” Giammusso said. “When the supply of tickets goes down, prices usually go up.”
If the team’s final season at Highmark Stadium is any indication, tickets are sure to be on the more expensive side.
The lowest prices to see the Bills play this season at home have averaged around $250 a seat per game on the secondary market. Many of those tickets are selling for way over face value.
Giammusso said he’s received a lot of calls from season ticket holders over the past year who are asking about whether it is worth it to get seats at the new stadium and pay the PSL and whether they can make their money back by selling some of the games.
“I tell them it all depends on if the Bills have a quality, playoff team and are in contention,” Giammusso said. “It seems like almost every team going into a new stadium is doing well. They need to sell seats, so they’ll usually invest more in players.”
For those who want to take a chance on getting individual tickets from the team, even if that does come to fruition, they’ll likely be limited.
“In a perfect world, they’ll be some availability, but demand has been so high that we’re kind of working through that first,” Pete Guelli, executive vice president and chief operating officer for the Bills, previously said.
“If people want to come on board and purchase a PSL, that’s been the first priority,” he added. “Once we get through that, we’ll have a better idea what and if anything will be available.”
The Bills new stadium is supposed to feature a standing room only "party deck" that can potentially accommodate a few thousand fans. However, the team is not offering more information on its availability at this time. There may also be some availability if the 3,725 tickets being held for each game are not all being used, but that could be a long shot.