Fans paying an average price of $422 for AFCC game tickets

[hawaiiansteel]

Fans paying a premium for AFC title game tickets

By Jeremy Boren, PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, January 22, 2011


Average ticket prices on the rise:

• $766 — Chicago Bears vs. Green Bay Packers, NFC Championship

• $422 — Pittsburgh Steelers vs. New York Jets, AFC Championship

• $347 — Steelers vs. Baltimore Ravens in the Jan. 18, 2009, AFC Championship

• $242 — Regular season Steelers-Jets game

Range of prices paid: $150 to $1,642

Top buyers live in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia.

Source: StubHub.com

Todd Hutson's job is to provide food, shelter and a comfortable bus ride to 55 New York Jets fans with tickets to Sunday's AFC Championship at Heinz Field.

Whether the Gang Green groupies will be happy on the nine-hour ride home is out of his control.

"Hopefully, if the Jets are celebrating, we'll stay after the game and have a few more beers," he said. "If not, then we'll all be climbing on to a very upset bus."

Most of those making the trip from New York paid $300 to $500 for tickets and up to $345 for a travel package that includes a Sunday night hotel stay, beer, burgers and hot dogs at a tailgate party with satellite TV to watch the 3 p.m. Bears-Packers NFC Championship in the parking lot.

It's a slice of the $19 million in spending Sunday night's game is expected to bring to Pittsburgh, with fans paying an average of $422 a ticket — 22 percent higher than the last home AFC Championship game in 2009.

Fans are willing to pay.

Steelers season-ticket holder Olindo Pasquarelli, 35, of Scott had no trouble selling his tickets for two seats in Section 227 for $700.

"I wasn't trying to lump anybody, and that's why I knew they were going to go fast," he said.

The owner of Double Take Automotive on Banksville Road, Pasquarelli is traveling with family on a long-planned trip to Disney World in Orlando, Fla., this weekend, so he won't be in town to attend the game.

Instead of using Craig's List, StubHub or the Steelers Ticket Exchange to list his tickets among the thousands for sale, he programmed his business's electronic billboard Wednesday to display "two Steelers tickets available."

In four hours, he had 20 inquiries.

"It kind of stinks, but we already have reservations at a Steelers bar in Orlando," he said.

The Steelers-Jets match-up is the highest-selling AFC Championship game and is on track to join the top six best-selling NFL games in StubHub's 11-year history, said spokesman Glenn Lehrman.

As of Friday, there were some $230 tickets for sale to the Steelers-Jets game. The highest price paid so far was $1,642 a ticket. Those willing to buy at the last minute could snag some bargains.

"Normally, we see ticket prices go down on game day, so if people are willing to wait it out, you can usually find good deals," Lehrman said.

He said some fans stand near the stadium browsing ticket prices on smartphones until game time. StubHub, owned by eBay, has a "last-minute services" desk near the stadium so fans can pick up their tickets.

Some elected officials won't have to go to all that trouble or expense.

Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato used a free ticket from the Sports & Exhibition Authority to attend the Steelers-Ravens divisional playoff last Saturday, said spokesman Kevin Evanto. Onorato plans to use a freebie again Sunday.

Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl will use a free ticket from the SEA for Sunday's game, spokeswoman Joanna Doven said. He did not attend Saturday's game.

SEA tickets to the Steelers-Ravens game were made available to City Council President Darlene Harris; state Sen. Wayne Fontana; state Rep. Jake Wheatley; former state Sen. Sean Logan; former Mayor Sophie Masloff; North Side developer Anthony J. Ross; Shadyside psychiatrist Edie Shapira; Downtown tax attorney Mike Danovitz; John Jackson III, vice president of Laborers Labor Union Local No. 373; and Mike Dunleavy, business manager of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local No. 5.

All are members of either the authority or its sister agency, the Stadium Authority, except for Wheatley, who is a former Stadium Authority member. Tickets were given to members of the Army 316th Expeditionary Sustainment Command.

The SEA gave away 42 tickets to the Steelers-Ravens game. Officials did not provide information about tickets to Sunday's game.

Most of the tickets are for seats in the upper-deck sections of 521 to 525, but some are for a suite.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsbu ... z1BjmyW1vx (http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/sports/steelers/s_719383.html#ixzz1BjmyW1vx)

[hawaiiansteel]

Crews Dig Out Heinz Field After Snowstorm

January 21, 2011 9:50 PM

http://cbspittsburgh.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/heinzfieldsnow2-1.jpg?w=420

(Photo Credit: KDKA)

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – If you think you had trouble digging out of your driveway this morning, imagine if you had to dig out a 65,000 seat stadium.

However, that’s exactly what’s going on at Heinz Field today as crews prepare for Sunday’s AFC Championship.

An army of guys armed with snow shovels cleared out Heinz Field the old-fashioned way Friday afternoon.

Four plus inches of snow has to be cleared from each and every seat, each and every step, even Mr. Rooney’s statue has to be cleared off. It’s late January, we’re playing football and we like it, snow, cold or whatever.

As for the field condition, the Steelers declined to be interviewed, but officials say it is nearly pristine.

It’s newly laid sod was covered with a tarp and is being heated. So, playing conditions on the ground should be excellent.

The air game is a different story.

A chilled wind is whipping through Heinz Field, a field known as one of the most difficult for kickers in the NFL. It just so happens that the New York Jets kicker, Nick Folk, has botched more field goals this season than any kicker in the NFL. Just sayin’…

But the snowfall at in Pittsburgh is nothing compared to what they faced at the New England Patriots’ Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts.

Piles of snow by the truck load were hauled out of there earlier this month after a blizzard hit the Boston area. Crews there said 16 million cubic feet of snow filled the stadium.

“If you put that on top of the playing surface of the stadium, it would be 280 feet tall,” said a Gillette Stadium official. “That would be 110 feet higher than the highest seat in the building.”

The Steelers aren’t talking about how much snow they’ve hauled out of Heinz Field. But needless to say, it’s a lot. They expect it will be all gone by game day.

There’s a chance for more snow Sunday morning. Also, the game time temperature will be in the teens. So, while the snow may be all cleared away, it will be one cold game.

http://burgh.us/1ez

[Mister Pittsburgh]

I have a feeling there is going to be a decent amount of green at the Stadium on Sunday. There are a few people at my work alone that listed their tickets on ebay to make a buck rather than go cheer on their team. A few of those people didn't even go to a single game this whole season yet own seat license. It pisses me off when I would gladly take their license and attend every game I could yet for me to get a license it would cost me 15k off of ebay.

Money isn't everything. Hopefully the amount of Jets faithful on hand isn't embarrassing.

[Djfan]

Passing up an AFCC at home for Disney World?? What a jagoff! Why did he even schedule it for then?

[hawaiiansteel]

Chilling out in black and gold:
Steelers, Jets could face coldest playoff game ever in Pittsburgh

Saturday, January 22, 2011
By Dan Majors, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/images/201101/steelers_500.jpg

Fans cheer during the Steelers Rally held Friday at the Allegheny County Courthouse.

The AFC championship game on Sunday might be a great matchup between two of the NFL's best teams, but there isn't a lot of bad blood between the Steelers and the New York Jets. You wouldn't call it a heated rivalry.

Especially this weekend.

The National Weather Service is predicting single-digit temperatures Sunday evening, making it possible that the players -- and the freezing fans huddled in Heinz Field -- might be experiencing the coldest Steelers home playoff game on record.

It's expected to be colder in Pittsburgh than it will be in Chicago for the Bears' afternoon game against the Green Bay Packers.

"It's shaping up as one of the coldest games here that I can remember," meteorologist Brad Rehak of the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh said Friday. "Going back to the 1970s with the Raiders-Steelers games."

The coldest playoff game in Pittsburgh was the AFC championship game of Jan. 23, 2005, when the temperature dropped to 9 degrees and the New England Patriots soared to the Super Bowl. But the famous "Pittsburgh Ice Bowl" against the Oakland Raiders, on Jan. 4, 1976, was played in worse conditions, even though the temperature was a crisp 18.

The story goes that the tarp over the Three Rivers Stadium turf the night before the game leaked and the rain that fell overnight became trapped and turned to ice. Players slid all over the field, and the score was 3-0 Steelers in the third quarter before a flurry of scoring late in the game gave the Steelers a 16-10 win.

"Every time I'd take off, I'd slip," Raiders receiver Cliff Branch said at the time. "The coverage wasn't a problem. It was the field."

"The ball felt like a rock," said Raiders linebacker Phil Villapiano.

"The elements were the big factor," Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw said. "It was slippery, and we were frozen. I was losing the feeling in my fingers."

Keith Brewster, 50, a meteorologist and researcher at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Okla., lists the "Pittsburgh Ice Bowl" among the games cited at his NFL Weather Hall of Fame website. Other standouts include the original "Ice Bowl" between the Packers and the Dallas Cowboys, the "Snowplow Game" in which the Patriots used a plow to clear a spot for a game-winning field goal, and "Leon Lett's Skating Rink" game in Dallas.

Other games mentioned exposed the gridiron to elements such as fog, rain and even a tornado watch.

"I was born and raised in Wisconsin, so I grew up a Packers fan," said Mr. Brewster, who started noting weather conditions at games when he was young. Eventually, he said, he made up his list and shared it with friends. He set up the website about 10 years ago.

"It's my ranking, but I don't consider it authoritative," he said.

The site features brief summaries of the games. His commentaries include the occasional jab at games played in domed stadiums.

Some of the games he didn't see, but he has heard the stories about them.

"Historically, football is an all-weather game, and both teams have to deal with that," he said. "It adds to the color of the game. Does it subtract from the athleticism? I'm not sure. If a team is going to go all the way, I think they should play well even when the weather isn't perfect."

The NFL schedules most of its Super Bowls in warm-weather cities, so the event becomes more of an outdoor celebration. But teams play all season long for the right to host playoff games on their home fields.

The Steelers have a reputation of thriving in cold weather. The team has played 27 playoff games in Pittsburgh since the NFL merger in the late 1960s, boasting a 19-8 record in those games. The average game-time temperature is 32.5 degrees.

But in conference championship games in Pittsburgh, the team's record is just 5-5. Three of the losses came when the temperature was above 36 degrees. So maybe weather will work to the home team's advantage.

The cold might be more of a problem for the fans in the stands than for the players, who will have access to heaters on the sidelines.

"And with the modern clothing, I think they'll be all right," Mr. Brewster said. "And you always have a couple of guys who are old-school, who show that they're tough by coming out in short sleeves."

Perhaps with all this chattering about the cold, the Steelers would do well to remember the words of Hall of Fame linebacker Jack Lambert after the local Ice Bowl in 1976.

"I've never minded playing in the cold," he said. "Actually, I think it's all in your mind. You condition yourself to block out the weather factor and just concentrate on what you're doing out there."

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11022/1119912-53.stm#ixzz1Bmw0vnJj

[pfelix73]

I was at that AFCC game vs. the Patriots. It dropped to about 3 degrees by the time it was over...Nasty.

I forgot to order tix for this one, so I'll be sitting at home in the cozy warm confines of my man cave. I sold a few pairs of tix for last weeks game and barely broke even on what I paid for them...oh well.... Last weekend was a blast. Hope tomorrow will be too.

:tt1

[NJ-STEELER]

just like 2 years ago vs. the ravens IIRC.

9 degrees. i had so many layers on a was sweating at one point

thats cold for sure though but one positive is that the beer stays cold too :wink: