Re: 2017 Frozen Four Ticket Purchase
...I always sit downstairs in one of the corners, but when I signed in, everything downstairs except for the ends were gone.
No doubt about, this was a striking difference from recent years. For those of us who like the corners, this is a loss.
Still, Club seating in the corners should be just as good, if not better, than the usual corner seats. So those at the highest levels of priority had a solution. But when that relatively small supply of seats runs out...well, you get the idea.
Settled for Section 231. Looks promising. No club level seats in center ice. Comments?
I truly believe that everyone in Club will enjoy their seats. Fair point about the lack of center ice seats. But historically speaking, we generally haven't had access that area of the arena. Keep reading...
I'm a priority number 18 and just wondered if everyone else got poor seat availability for the Frozen Four? Looks like the greedy NCAA blocked out all of the center lower and club sections leaving us true fans the "privilege" to sit in the corners and behind the goals.
Yes, and as per the above, even the supply of corners has been reduced.
BTW, thanks for joining the main conversation.
Any one else experience the same? Were any of you 20's and 19's able to get ANYTHING in the center sections? In Tampa I was 3rd row on the face off dot. Seems like most years the most loyal fans get shut out of the center sections. Disappointing...
Factually you're quite correct. There is more than one way to spin that, of course. Regardless, let's take a quick look at the last 10 years.
We start with St.Louis 2007. From that point forward, the normal situation has been as follows:
The vast majority of priority holders in the Lower Level are pinned behind the end lines.
There have been some wonderful exceptions. In DC 2009, I had great seats on the side, at roughly the high slot. Last year, meaning Tampa 2016, I had spectacular red line seats in the Club Level.
In harsh contrast, the 2010 FFFF in Detroit gave us a location on the sides -- but the seats were totally unusable. It was impossible to see the game from the "no slope" seats in the low rows. If you want to talk about a year when high priority people got screwed, this is the one. We literally became nomads at the tournament, searching for open seats as if we had purchased General Admission tickets. All that said, the Ford Field set-up was such an anomaly it's reasonable to hope that it will never be repeated.
But for the other years, the St. Louis pattern held true. Sometimes a very small handful of applicants at the top got great seats. Other years we literally had a "Lottery With No Winners." IIRC, I coined that phrase in connection with Pittsburgh 2013. Though in fairness to Pittsburgh, that year gave us the ability to select our seats within the designated areas -- a truly meaningful improvement.
Bottom Line? The lower demand tournaments in non-traditional markets give us the best seats. When demand is at least perceived to be higher, seat assignments return to normal. For better or worse, the assignments at the UC are mostly a return to normal. The notable quirk is that the additional Club Level seats come at the expense of the Lower Bowl corners.
