UFL ticket sales a little soft
The UFL will kick off its inaugural season this Thursday night with a game between the California Redwoods, and the Las Vegas Locomotives. That game will be held at Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas, and so far they have only been able to sell some 5,000 tickets. Since the league was projecting crowds of more that 20,000 for each of it’s 13 inaugural season games, this league will have to rely on strong walk up sales to insure it meets that goal.
In all reality though 20,000 fans for a minor league football game in a league that has yet to take the field seems kind of high. The second game of the UFL season will be held at the Citrus Bowl in Florida and feature a game with the Florida Tuskers and the New York Sentinels. Neither of these games will be in a big enough market to reach 20,000 fans.
This league has fallen victim to a lot of panning and some troubles with other leagues. The debut UFL was supposed to take place at AT&T park in San Francisco, a town full of big time football fans, but the league had to move the game to Vegas since it looked like the San Francisco Giants would make the post season and disrupt the football plans.
Now the UFL will debut in the same stadium that the XFL did. How well they will draw still seems to be a question, but the weak sales so far has to be of great concern to this league and its owners. The XFL was able to draw an average crowd of more than 22,000 in its five games hosted there, but the XFL drew an average crowd of more than 35,000 in it five games hosted in San Francisco. Losing that San Francisco date may be a bad omen for this new league.
