Ice Bowl 2008 - Cold Reception Here in the 'Burgh

Many Pens fans are quite upset over the NHL's handling of the ticket sales for the Ice Bowl on 1/1/08. It has been widely reported that the game sold out in less than 30 minutes (I can attest to that after trying to purchase tickets online at 10:30 am yesterday) mostly due to the fact that there was a 50 ticket limit on each sale. Given that fact, since there were only approximately 43,000 tickets available for the game after Buffalo and Toronto fans were given their shares, that would only allow several thousand individuals access to the tickets. Tickets are in abundance on online auction sites suggesting most of them were purchased by the unscrupulous ticket brokers.

And while Buffalo's entire season ticket base was given the option to buy tickets, the Pens have stated that they only received about 1,000 to sell directly to their season ticket holders. In order for Penguins ticket holders to order the tickets they were sent a special code and password to enter on Ticketmaster. To add insult to injury, this code and password were leaked on the internet, allowing virtually anyone to purchase on of these tickets.

All in all I give this a BAD rating for the NHL. This could have been handled in a much different way that would satisfy fans of both teams as well as give many more people in the Pittsburgh area the opportunity to purchase tickets for this once in a lifetime event.

UPDATE - I've also heard talk and seen reported in print that Ticketmaster outlets in the Pittsburgh region were not even able to sell tickets for the Ice Bowl. ONLY outlets in the Buffalo, Erie region had them available. So the only way they could even be purchased here was online and by telephone!