It seems that I’m not the only person who foresaw the Bengals having another dismal season this year. It appears that most season ticket holders are attempting to sell their tickets second hand online. Yet the season tickets holders can’t even find buyers. While the Bengals have been sold out since the opening of Paul Brown Stadium, it isn’t the season ticket holders who are contributing to the sell outs this year.
It turns out that even on the second hand market, Bengals tickets aren’t going for face value, in fact they are quite below that value. While this is the Bengals home opener and is historic for selling second hand at almost twice the value this year the tickets are going for less than half( a 64 dollar ticket is going for 29 dollars). I happen to be a season ticket holder of the Bengals and am very glad that I was able to get rid of the tickets for this Sunday’s game against the Titans before the prices dropped (due to myself going to the Purdue-Oregon game and then staying on campus to watch the OSU-USC game and not being able to make it back in time). I also happened to sell the Browns and Pittsburg tickets about 2 months ago due to the fact that I predicted the Bengals would have a disappointing season and by selling these tickets I pretty much covered the expenses of the whole season. While I was lucky, it is apparent that other tickets holders as well as ticket brokers are feeling the hurt.
It appears that the Marvin Lewis got the feeling that this would happen as well and vowed that the Bengals will be going undefeated at home this season. That alone is a big statement, but considering the home opponents and the current state of our team, I think Marvin made that statement as a last ditch effort to show he cares about Cincinnati even though he will most likely be out of a job at the end of the season.
This is my prediction regarding ticket sales: The Bengals will be sold out this year as usual (due to season ticket holders holding all tickets which can’t be returned). Next year there will be a decrease of about 10-15 percent, thus not a sell out for each game besides the home opener and Browns, Steelers games. If we are able to turn things around next year then maybe towards the end of the season ticket sales will pick back up. I can only hope I am wrong and we do go undefeated at home this year and then make the playoffs due to that success.
Keywords: Marvin Lewis, Paul Brown, Sell out, Tickets
