Canadiens Tickets
- Thread starter westwoody
- Start date
Not if you are willing to pay, negotiate with scalpers, and/or roll the dice when the Bell Center ticket office makes the unused player allotment of tickets available to the public, usually around 12-2 pm on game days.
Scalpers, Kijiji.... I usually go the scalper route and buy right when the game starts, more leverage to haggle.
Never used stubhub, guessing e-tickets you need to print or can you get a bar code on your phone?
Interested in seeing the Rangers on Staurday.
Interested in seeing the Rangers on Staurday.
Check Ticketmaster first.
I took Victoria Jolie to a Jets game here in Winnipeg.
Ticketmaster had tickets, I printed them at home, they scan the barcode at the door, no problem.
Only caveat is the tickets get snapped up very quickly. I was checking every half hour for a week. When good ones come up you have to grab them.
I took Victoria Jolie to a Jets game here in Winnipeg.
Ticketmaster had tickets, I printed them at home, they scan the barcode at the door, no problem.
Only caveat is the tickets get snapped up very quickly. I was checking every half hour for a week. When good ones come up you have to grab them.
Canadiens tickets are easy to get. But as my friend Rick Blaine said to Ugarte, "For a price, Ugarte, for a price."
I second the recommendations made by others to consider using Stubhub and scalpers. I attended a Canadiens game with a friend last year and I bought two tickets from a scalper in the lower seats, red section, four rows back from the ice right behind one goal. I think I paid $120 CDN each (about $90 US) Whatever it was, it was less than the face value of the tickets.
It was a midweek game late in the season vs. Minnesota and the Canadiens were having a poor season with almost no chance to make the playoffs. Those factors definitely affected the price (in my favor). Despite the bad performance of the team (though they won that night), the Bell Centre was mostly full and it was a great experience. I'm not a hardcore hockey fan but I enjoy the sport and appreciate its importance to the city.
The team is doing much better this year so general demand for tickets is probably higher than last year. The supply-demand situation is also affected by the day of the week and the opponent. Prices will be higher for a Sat. night game vs. the Bruins or Leafs than for a Tuesday night game vs. Minnesota or Colorado.
There are lots of scalpers and though they seem somewhat aggressive and a little sketchy, I think they are generally honest and fairly trustworthy. After all, they do this for every game and they can't afford to rip people off and stay in business. The scalpers as a group have an interest in keeping up their reputation as honest brokers.
My approach to them was to talk to a few on the day before the game (some gather outside the Bell Centre the day before) and get an idea of market prices. I printed out and brought with me a color coded map of the arena so that I could see precise locations of seats that were for sale. i got a feel for market prices so that I would be ready to buy the next day, the day of the game. I returned on the day of the game about an hour before the start of the game and wound up buying seats about 30 minutes before the start of the game.
Given a tighter market this year, you might not want to wait until just before the start of the game. Decide how much you can pay and when you get a deal that matches your preferences take it, whether it's 30 minutes before the game or 3 hours before the game.
If you don't like dealing with the scalpers (I can kind of like it) then Stubhub is a very good and trustworthy option. You may pay a little more (or maybe even less) than with a scalper, but you will waste less time searching for tickets.
Searching for good Canadiens tickets is a little like searching for a good escort. As Voltaire said: the perfect is the enemy of the good. You won't find perfect tickets or a perfect escort. But do your research and you will be able to recognize a good deal in either tickets or an escort.
I second the recommendations made by others to consider using Stubhub and scalpers. I attended a Canadiens game with a friend last year and I bought two tickets from a scalper in the lower seats, red section, four rows back from the ice right behind one goal. I think I paid $120 CDN each (about $90 US) Whatever it was, it was less than the face value of the tickets.
It was a midweek game late in the season vs. Minnesota and the Canadiens were having a poor season with almost no chance to make the playoffs. Those factors definitely affected the price (in my favor). Despite the bad performance of the team (though they won that night), the Bell Centre was mostly full and it was a great experience. I'm not a hardcore hockey fan but I enjoy the sport and appreciate its importance to the city.
The team is doing much better this year so general demand for tickets is probably higher than last year. The supply-demand situation is also affected by the day of the week and the opponent. Prices will be higher for a Sat. night game vs. the Bruins or Leafs than for a Tuesday night game vs. Minnesota or Colorado.
There are lots of scalpers and though they seem somewhat aggressive and a little sketchy, I think they are generally honest and fairly trustworthy. After all, they do this for every game and they can't afford to rip people off and stay in business. The scalpers as a group have an interest in keeping up their reputation as honest brokers.
My approach to them was to talk to a few on the day before the game (some gather outside the Bell Centre the day before) and get an idea of market prices. I printed out and brought with me a color coded map of the arena so that I could see precise locations of seats that were for sale. i got a feel for market prices so that I would be ready to buy the next day, the day of the game. I returned on the day of the game about an hour before the start of the game and wound up buying seats about 30 minutes before the start of the game.
Given a tighter market this year, you might not want to wait until just before the start of the game. Decide how much you can pay and when you get a deal that matches your preferences take it, whether it's 30 minutes before the game or 3 hours before the game.
If you don't like dealing with the scalpers (I can kind of like it) then Stubhub is a very good and trustworthy option. You may pay a little more (or maybe even less) than with a scalper, but you will waste less time searching for tickets.
Searching for good Canadiens tickets is a little like searching for a good escort. As Voltaire said: the perfect is the enemy of the good. You won't find perfect tickets or a perfect escort. But do your research and you will be able to recognize a good deal in either tickets or an escort.
CR I agree with you about the Bell Centre scalpers. I have bought tickets from them on multiple occasions and some of them are recognizable. They are there every game.
I remember one guy in particular, an apparently well educated French Canadian guy who spoke almost perfect English. He heard our accents and correctly guessed my friend and I were from the New York City area and asked us if this was so. He then asked us if we were also football fans and started talking about the NY Giants of which we are fans, my friend actually a Giants season ticket holder. It was obvious he knew his sports. We talked about football for a few minutes and then the conversation turned to the business of scalping some hockey tickets. He showed us a seating chart of the Bell Centre and where the seat tickets he was scalping were. He told us face value and what he was looking for. He negotiated with us. If I recall correctly, we paid him $180 each for the tickets, 10 rows up, near center ice. He was straight with us.
I remember one guy in particular, an apparently well educated French Canadian guy who spoke almost perfect English. He heard our accents and correctly guessed my friend and I were from the New York City area and asked us if this was so. He then asked us if we were also football fans and started talking about the NY Giants of which we are fans, my friend actually a Giants season ticket holder. It was obvious he knew his sports. We talked about football for a few minutes and then the conversation turned to the business of scalping some hockey tickets. He showed us a seating chart of the Bell Centre and where the seat tickets he was scalping were. He told us face value and what he was looking for. He negotiated with us. If I recall correctly, we paid him $180 each for the tickets, 10 rows up, near center ice. He was straight with us.
The Winnipeg Jets are almost always completely sold out.
It is a common joke here that it is cheaper to fly to Phoenix and see a game there than it is to get good tickets here. Lots of people do exactly that.
I prefer the Ticketmaster option just because of the security of the tickets. Fake tickets are very common here on Kijiji, I don't know anyone who has tried Stubhub.
It is a common joke here that it is cheaper to fly to Phoenix and see a game there than it is to get good tickets here. Lots of people do exactly that.
I prefer the Ticketmaster option just because of the security of the tickets. Fake tickets are very common here on Kijiji, I don't know anyone who has tried Stubhub.
I mostly buy mine directly from their website at: www.montrealcanadiens.com which will rediredtly you to their NHL site. I rarely purchase tickets from scalpers since there are nearly always tickets available on the team's site. Plus they usually always release some tickets on game day.
I don't know if this is the case elsewhere, but i've seen many scams going on in Toronto in regards to Leafs and Raptors tickets where tickets advertised on popular sites such as kijiji and craiglist are fakes. It has also happened to people who bought from scalpers, although it's entirely possible the scalpers also got scammed if they bought them from people advertising from various sites.
I was at a Raptors game last year and two guys in front of me had to be escorted out by security when people who had bought legit tickets arrived at their seats which had already been occupied by the two guys. Security took the two guys' tickets and left for a few minutes. They returned a few minutes later and informed them that they were fake tickets and they had to leave. I overheard the guys telling the security guy that they had paid $700 for the pair off a guy they had met outside the venue. Later i saw the same thing happen to three guys who informed the security guy that they had purchased the tickets 'off the internet'. The security guy later told me that these types of scams are very common and it happens every game.
That's why i always decline to buy e-tickets, which are easy to re-produce. I always insist on 'hard tickets'. I noticed that the guys who got scammed and had to be escorted out all had e-tickets.
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