Virtual waiting rooms are as much fun as real waiting rooms

Detroit Tigers single game tickets went on sale March 1st, and it was a record setting day for the organization. The team sold over 80,000 tickets in the first 2 hours after the tickets went on sale. With a crush of demand it meant long lines no matter how fans tried to obtain tickets.

I heard reports on the radio of people waiting 4 hours at the Comerica Park box office. I swung by Hockeytown Authentics in Troy shortly after noon only to find a line that was still probably 50 people. And for those trying to buy from the comfort of their own homes, most experienced the tickets.com phenomenon of the virtual waiting room. Which like any good waiting room involves waiting for an indiscriminate amount of time and very little feedback as to when your turn might come up. I was trying the phone all morning as well never getting through.

Those that weren’t having luck with the prescribed methods were peppering Google with inquiries. Around the middle of the day “detroit tigers tickets” was the 3rd most popular query for the search engine.
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Still, there seemed to be good tickets available early on, even for the bigger series with some On Deck Circle seats even popping up. But at this point you’re out of luck for some games unless you get lucky on some returned tickets or you become familiar with Stubhub and the like.

Some games, such as the Yankees series were down to standing room only tickets when I checked in the late afternoon. Others, like the Friday games for the Dodgers and Rockies, and the Labor Day game against the A’s had no tickets available.

In all the Tigers sold 176,000 tickets as of the ticket office closing at 6pm. With a season ticket base of 26,000 combined with today’s sales the Tigers paid attendance is already over 2.25 million. A report earlier in the week revealed that nearly all of the 300,000 tickets set aside for group sales were reserved meaning that over 2,500,000 tickets are spoken for.

3 thoughts on “Virtual waiting rooms are as much fun as real waiting rooms”

  1. There are 2 games on the schedule that have GREAT tickets left.

    Why? because they are not part of any 27 game packages. Both are Thursday Afternoon games:

    6/12 v CWS
    8/14 v TOR

    I bought 4 extra to each and every type of seat in the stadium is available (I got some upper level club seats which I love!).

    -Sam

  2. The virtual waiting room was a real hoot. Fortunately we were able to get in(eventually) and snag decent seats for the games we wanted. I was especially pleased to pick up 2 games against the Red Sox.

    I’m praying for a Verlander/Beckett matchup. :>)

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