The Green Bay Packers will be on the air in their home market this weekend, after the team managed to sell off the remaining tickets for Sunday’s wild card playoff game against the San Francisco 49ers at Lambeau Field.
At the start of this week, 40,000 tickets for the game were still available and selling slowly, prompting concerns that local Fox affiliates would be unable to air the game because of rules that require a sellout crowd at the stadium. That would have kept the Packers off the air in Green Bay, Milwaukee, and Wausau.
The NFL on Thursday gave the team a 24 hour extension on a deadline to sell the tickets, with about 3,000 remaining. Once the number of remaining seats dropped below a thousand, Packers spokesman Aaron Popke says several corporate partners stepped in to buy the remaining seats. They include Associated Bank, Mills Fleet Farm, Bellin Health, and Fox TV affiliates in Green Bay, Milwaukee and Wausau.
Popke would not say how many tickets those corporate partners purchased.
The team was struggling to sell all of the seats for Sunday’s game after many season ticket holders took a pass on them last fall. Part of the reason for that was the option to buy came during a time when the Packers’ post season prospects looked dim, although Popke admits a new team policy that directed any refund towards tickets for next season may have also been a factor. He says the policy is something the Packers will review during the off season.
WHBY
