Lombardi: Jets had 12,000 unsold tickets as of Friday

Getty Images

At the tail end of NFL Network’s First on the Field, Mike Lombardi dropped a factoid that could set everyone’s clock in New York to Tebow Time.

Lombardi said that 12,000 tickets to Monday night’s game between the Texans and the Jets were unsold as of Friday.

As Lombardi surmises, the struggles to fill the seats will make it more likely that Tebow will get a shot, at some point, to start at quarterback.

Meanwhile, that many unsold tickets could have triggered a local blackout of the game, unless the Jets bought up the balance at 34 cents on the dollar.  If they did, it all happened quietly.

Now that the 12,000 (du)cats are out of the bag, it won’t stay quiet much longer.

34 responses to “Lombardi: Jets had 12,000 unsold tickets as of Friday

  1. Wow. The largest market in the nation and still, 12,000 unsold tickets.

    This is obviously bad news for Rex Ryan, Mark Sanchez and the Jet fan base, as well as others – and one might expect to see Woody Johnson stumping even harder for Tebow Time.

    One thing about the Jets: I had buddies back east who long held season tix with the Jets, and the Jets broke out one year with this extraordinarily expensive Personal Seat License deal, where fans were demanded to pay thousands and thousands of dollars merely for the right to buy a ticket. That left a sour taste in many Jets fans — trust me on that.

    Boy, that impressive win in Week 1 versus Buffalo seems like it happened a decade ago.

  2. N.Y./ N.J. fans will not allow themselves to support bad teams, right now all of their energy is tied up as quasi Yankee/Giant fans in two weeks they will all dissapear.

  3. Florio and the rest of the national media Tebow pushers continue to show that they know nothing about NY area sports. They somehow think that the NY fans is as mesmerized by Tebow and will suddenly show up if he starts. They won’t
    There is a reason why this game isn’t sold out. New Yorkers notoriously HATE driving in Monday rush hour through the tunnels to get to a Monday night game and back through the tunnels to get home at 1am on a weekday with work the following day.
    That and the team is bad and they have the most expensive tickets in the nfl.
    New Yorkers aren’t stupid. Even though reporter think Tebow heals the lame and the sick, he will not change any of these problems,

  4. Thats funny because they just called . The Jets sale rep said they had 2ok tickets on sale for half price for New Jersey business owners . Was there ever a Monday night game blacked out ?

  5. Now that is the right message to send to owners. When your team is not playing well just stay home.

  6. What everyone needs to understand is that the Jets have been and always will be the Red Headed Step Children of NY Football. The Giants would never have 12,000 tickets available even back when they were below a 500 football team is which is where the Jets season headed this year.

  7. The Jets really nailed their season ticket holders when they moved into the new stadium. Massive ticket price increases, huge PSL’s and the ridiculous parking restrictions they put in place – All this on top of the SOJ’s year in year out. Is it any wonder they had so many tickets left over?

  8. It’s funny how bills fans are still talking smack about the Jets, when’s the last time your clown team beat the Jets? 4 years ago? And you guys are right, you aren’t going anywhere, not as long as Fitzpatrick is your QB, dude averages like 3 picks a game since your genius gave him that monster deal. #billsmafiaMYDICK

  9. What percentage of the Yets’ income comes from ticket sales/concession/in-stadium revenue?

    :ohreally:

  10. Ditto to bigpap.
    If they Owner really wanted to be fan friendly, he would’ve move the Jets to Queens (plenty of space by Citifield) very close to his base of Jet fans in Long Island.
    Instead he keeps the team in NJ, charges PSL’s and extremely high ticket and parking passes. On top of that a fan has to pay polls and endure terrible traffic.
    Why would anyone want to endure that when they can watch in the comfort of their home on their 60″HDTV and be $400 richer?

  11. I agree with professor columbus too.
    As much as we fans love football, the Nfl stadium is experience is not that great. Drunks, fights, no access to replays, analysis, can’t monitor fantasy teams or see other games, traffic, tix prices, food prices, recession, on and on. The home experience Ed better and much, much cheaper.
    Unless to really love to tailgate and fellowship with other fans, I don’t see why anyone would rather go to the game.

  12. Can you blame them? I guess all the Favre hype and PSL push was for not trying to lure interest to Giant Stadium.

    Few want to see this team faile around on the field. Must be something better on TV this Monday night.

    What’s the spread by now… 30?

  13. Great, now Woody can go stump harder for his looser friend. It will be a long year for him that’s for sure.

  14. I’m not the only one on this board who said by game 5 the Jets would be going gangbusters or, Sanchez and the Jets would suck and it would be Tebow mania time.
    I got a hundred that say’s Tebow took a lot of snaps in practice this week. His time is this week. He won’t start but he’ll see a lot of playing time on Monday night football. If he saves da jets, he will start next week and Sanchez will be bench bound.

    Sanchez died at the end of last season. The Jets got Tebow for a reason as insurance in case Sanchez kept screwing up. His time in NY is almost to an end. His bigger problem is, who needs him?

  15. Several issues with the Jets and attendence.
    1. Pricing-PSL prices are overpriced. Even though the recession hasn’t hit the NYC metro area as bad as other parts of the nation things are still a bit slow here.
    2. Jets history- The Jets have a good solid loyal following but the candid truth is the NY Giants are the primary football team in this market. The Giants suck a lot of the air out of the room in the NYC metro area.
    3. The HDTV factor. As many football markets have seen many folks now prefer the home experience rather than fighting the traffic and seeing a game in person. I can buy a six pack and a order of wings for what two beers would cost me at an NFL game.
    4. Wins and losses. I know I know the Jets made a couple of AFC championship games a few years ago but overall the Jets product has historicaly overwhelmingly poor. Who wants to see a team lose?
    5. Traffic and parking. When the new meadowlands stadium opened we although the long nightmare of entrance/exit traffic at the stadium would be solved. NOT! Traffic is just as bad and in an almost unbelievable move there seems to be actually less parking at the new stadium then the old. Yes I said LESS parking on site. The Jets now bus people from remote area’s to the stadium. This is both ridiculous and sad.
    There are other smaller issues but you get the picture. The Jets future is not bright. The truth hurts sometimes my friends.

  16. This ticket issue is big everywhere. For several years, maybe even a decade, a few big corporations in the Twin Cities agreed to buy up all remaining tickets to Vikes games, thus insuring the games would be on TV.
    That deal ended two years ago and now the owners and local tv stations have had to pony up when the team sucks. This year no problem, last year big problem. Local TV stations bought them up so they could get the commercials on.

    The owners feel, if the fans do not get to see the game on TV, they may learn there is life beyond football and it may set a precedent that if the game is on fine, if not fine. They don’t want that to happen and are hell bent to make sure those games are not blacked out and the NFL will change its rules to make sure those games don’t get blacked out if they can.

    Look at Nascar. In two years they’ve gone from full stadiums to asking the cameramen not to show the stands only 2/3rd full if you can avoid it.
    The economy sucks. People can’t shell out that kind of money anymore, and there are just too many races. Let that be a lesson for football, more is not always better.
    The ten car race thing is just Nascar trying to dip into the NF profits.

  17. Let’s see. 125$ a ticket,50$ to park at the izod center and walk to the stadium, 9.00 beers, 7$ hot dog. PSL liscense, I can’t imagine why people don’t go.

  18. This is totally hilarious!!!! How many times have I seen jests fans on here mocking other teams (particularly the Fins) for not being able to sell out. At least Miami has beautiful beaches, awesome night life, and so many other fun things to do besides going to a game (not to mention they stunk but have lots of hope not with Tanny at the helm).

    Tebow may sell out the stadium for a couple of games, but as soon as he starts showing his “QB abilities” it’ll be the same thing.

  19. Jets have enough fans to fill the stadium, they need to cut prices by at least 50%. They don’t have the product to justify the highest ticket prices in the NFL.

  20. Fitzpatrick wasn’t signed to a “monster” deal. His contract is very average for a starting QB.
    Now, is he worthy of being a starting QB? That’s another story

  21. Hey, jetsareajoke you sound stupid. You say Miami has things to do as if New York is Fargo, North Dakota.
    Do you really think that NY does not have a wide variety of things going on for people of all interests on a Sunday or Monday night?
    Miami has beaches and clubs. That’s it.other than that…..

  22. Wow.. .they only have 20+ million people in the area. Why cant they sell out? Somebody tell me again why NY has 3 teams when they can’t support them?

    They should just move them to LA… za-zing!
    (thumbs up, Chargers, Jags, Bucs fans).

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to leave a comment. Not a member? Register now!

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.