Maple Leafs Fail To Draw Capacity Crowd For Free Preseason Game
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Maple Leafs Unable To Fill Arena For Last
Night's Free Preseason Game Against Sabres |
The Maple Leafs last night at Air Canada Centre hosted the Sabres for the Coca-Cola Zero Fans First Game, but on a night when the "tickets were given away free ... there were no-shows by the thousands," according to Dave Feschuk of the TORONTO STAR. The club announced a capacity crowd of 18,819, but Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment President & CEO Richard Peddie during the first intermission said that "his most recent check had the turnstile count at 80[%] of capacity, which would have translated to a crowd of about 15,000." Peddie said that he "expected the count to reach about 85[%] of capacity before the night was through." Peddie: "It's just classic. Anything that's given away free, people don't attribute as much value to it." Feschuk notes the game was a "much-publicized pre-season giveback to the embattled loyalists" of the team, and considering the tickets were available for free by signing up online and that all the tickets were "supposedly dispersed, perhaps it made no sense." Feschuk also notes there was "evidence ticket speculators got a little overzealous in trying to turn the freebies into profit," as one scalper sought $300 for a pair of tickets (TORONTO STAR, 9/23). But in Toronto, Lance Hornby writes, "As a public relations exercise, the gratis exhibition opener was a roaring success" (TORONTO SUN, 9/23).
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