The Pittsburgh Steelers have no issues when it comes to selling tickets. When it comes to playing night games, however, the Steelers have a hard time filling up the stadium.
As explained by Mark Kaboly of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, three of the last four Monday night games played at Heinz Field have featured 9,125, 7,856, and 7,346 no-shows. Last December’s Sunday night game against the Bengals had a whopping 19,627 no-shows.
“It’s a Monday and people have to work on a Tuesday. I understand,” cornerback Ike Taylor told Kaboly. “Everybody has to pay bills. Those 9,000 people who couldn’t make it had some bills to pay.”
But it would be a little easier to pay the bills by selling the tickets via the online exchange program the NFL has adopted. That’s the strangest part of this. If you’re not going to the game, sell the tickets to any of the thousands of Western Pennsylvania/Eastern Ohio/Northern West Virginia resident who would love to go to a game, but who assume it’s too hard to get tickets.
It’s something the team and the league should promote, under the same reasoning that supports the blackout policy. Full stadiums make games more compelling on TV.
In Pittsburgh, where those retina-scorching yellow seats become obvious to the viewer when asses aren’t in them, it’s even more important to fill those chairs with folks swinging yellow towels conceived by the man with the eardrum-scorching voice.
Indeed, if the late Myron Cope saw all those empty seats, he’d say “Hm-hah!” and “Triple yoi!” over a situation that should be anything but “okey dokel” in Pittsburgh. Each of those chairs could be and should be occupied by Steelers fans cheering on the team to a win with the same enthusiasm that Cope always had.
So if you have tickets to Sunday night’s game against the Ravens but you don’t plan to go, take advantage of the available technology and stuff and sell those tickets to someone who’ll show up.