FLORHAM PARK, NJ (AP) -- The New York Jets began selling individual game tickets online Tuesday for less than 2,000 remaining upper-bowl seats in their $1.6 billion New Meadowlands Stadium.
The roughly 16,000 tickets went on sale to season-ticket holders in the morning exclusively through ticketmaster.com, and were made available to the general public later in the afternoon. Fans can purchase up to eight tickets, with prices ranging from $105-$135, not including regular Ticketmaster fees.
The Jets said Tuesday night that the tickets made available earlier in the day for the first two home games had already sold out.
Matt Higgins, the Jets' executive vice president of business operations, said 96 percent of the stadium's overall seats are sold. He insists the stadium will be sold out by the season opener Sept. 13 - meaning the team will avoid any television blackout possibilities.
"It took a long time and we made several mistakes along the way, but made the changes we needed to make," Higgins said. "Now, we're on the eve of being sold out and we will be sold out by kickoff."
Higgins added that the 96 percent does not include club seats, which do not factor into possible blackout situations.
Higgins said many of the upper-bowl seats became available when fans upgraded from that non-PSL area to other sections that recently went on sale at a discounted rate.
"I think the conventional wisdom was that these (upper-bowl seats) would sell out right away and the PSLs would be harder to sell," Higgins said. "They did sell out very quickly, but I think as we began to explain the benefits that go along with the PSL and take fans on tours of the stadium, there was a lot of movement in the building."
The Giants, who share the stadium with the Jets, recently made roughly 1,400 remaining individual tickets for each of their eight regular-season games available online.
"We made a commitment early on that we would not sell any tickets that could be sold as a PSL on an individual game basis," Higgins said, "so we wouldn't have the scenario of somebody sitting in a PSL seat who paid $10,000 next to somebody who paid $150 for that game."
(Copyright ©2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
