Nearly 30,000 tickets have already been sold for the AC Milan Chelsea match scheduled for August 3, in Minneapolis, Minn. Benjamin Spencer of Relevent Sports confirmed those numbers on Monday saying presale tickets alone accounted for about 20,000.
Spencer said the presale tickets were sold solely through email lists of those who had signed up or had previously purchased tickets to an International Champions Cup (ICC) event. They also used other lists from U.S. Bank Stadium, the Minnesota Vikings, youth soccer and supporters groups.
According to Spencer, Relevent Sports – who runs the ICC competition – uses Ticketmaster which limits the amount of tickets sold to small batches. That discourages third party ticket buyers from swooping up tickets to resell them. “With any sort of event like this there is always going to be someone who gets some codes and tries to buy up some tickets,” said Spencer. “Ticketmaster has a limit so someone can’t go on and buy 2,000 tickets at one time and hoard them to sell later.”
In 2014 Relevent Sports brought Manchester City and Olympiacos to TCF Bank Stadium for an ICC match. That game drew a crowd of 34,000 but sale where sluggish and tickets were discounted.
Spencer reports an additional 10,000 tickets have been sold since sales were opened to the general public and is very optimistic for sales projections. The Relevent spokesperson says they look at sales in three waves, the presale (first two or three weeks), the long sale and the final sales were people are “getting really excited about the event.” He said when U.S. Bank Stadium nears completion it should give the sales an “extra boost” as the game will be the first-ever event in the new stadium.
Interestingly, Spencer reports that the bulk of sale so far have been from the Twin Cities, with only 300 tickets being sold to fans from Des Moines, Chicago, Duluth, Sioux Falls, St. Louis and Cedar Rapids.
A source familiar with SMG, the company who manages the new U.S. Bank Stadium, said employees are optimistic and believe they’re on track to eventually sell out the event. If true, it would set a record in Minnesota for the largest-ever attended soccer event. The new stadium will have a seating capacity of about 60,000 for soccer. On May 28, 1984, the Minnesota Strikers created the current record for the largest crowd to ever see a soccer game in Minnesota. The Strikers defeated Tampa Bay 1-0, in front of 52,621 at the Metrodome.
“This first wave was very positive and we are on a really good pace,” Spencer concluded. “We’ve done really well.”
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