GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – With 11,000 season ticket accounts opting in for the chance to get Packers tickets this season, but only 6,500 tickets available for Sunday’s NFC Championship game, not everyone ended up with a ticket who wanted one.
The Packers say the odds of an opted-in season ticket holder getting tickets were about 15% considering the 6,500 seats were separated into about 1,600 pods of two, four, and six seats. However, some fans say problems in the Packers’ ticketing system are more to blame for not landing seats.
Rick Crain, of Clintonville, tells FOX 11 he had asleepless night after an email from the Packers with a passcode to buy playoff tickets didn’t show up when the team said it would.
“My uncle and I were waiting for this email to come. Never came, never came, never came. Middle of the night we kept checking it.”
A check of social media shows Crain and his uncle weren’t alone with the missing email, which was supposed to arrive the night before tickets went on sale.
Crain says his emails to the team bounced back and he called as soon as the Lambeau Field ticket office opened, one hour before tickets were set to go on sale.
“It’s very stressful that the system seemed flawed.”
Crain got his code two minutes before the sale, but he says it was too late.
“By that time, when you get onto Ticketmaster because it was so close, we were in the queue of 2,000 plus or better and the scrolling thing just didn’t move for 35 minutes.”
FOX 11 asked Packers President and CEO Mark Murphy why some season ticket holders did not receive the email when they were supposed to.
“Again, so much of this is controlled by Ticketmaster. We’ve been in constant touch with them. On their end they felt the process and procedure went well today.”
Another issue fans complained about on social media was selecting seats only to get a sorry message and then get completely booted from the site, putting them back at the end of the virtual ticket line.
“If it’s on our end or through Ticketmaster, they’re representing us, so we want to make sure that if that did occur that we can do something to correct it in the future,” said Murphy.
Murphy said there was nothing the team could do right now for the people who experienced problems.
“We’re one of the ones that opted in and we’re just out in the cold,” said Crain.
The Packers says they will follow up with us once they’ve talked about the issues more with Ticketmaster.
Murphy says the tickets sold out in about 40 minutes when they went on sale Wednesday morning at 10 a.m.
About 500 more tickets were available for opted-in season ticket holders compared to last week’s playoff game against the Rams.
Murphy says a survey of fans who attended that game returned positive results, especially on fan safety. However, he says there were some issues with people keeping masks on and maintaining social distance in concession lines.
“You hate to do it, but if people don’t comply and continue to refuse to wear the mask, you might have to remove them from the stadium.”
With invited frontline workers and season ticket holders, more than 8,500 fans are expected to be at Sunday’s game with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
