NFL playoffs: Tickets for the Patriots’ wild card game against the Bills are preposterously cheap

It appears as if #BillsMafia is not overly eager to see its team enter the NFL playoffs, at least when judged by current ticket prices. Fans can enter the Buffalo Bills’ wild card contest against the New England Patriots on Saturday by investing as little as $46 over at Tickpick.

Dozens of tickets for the game at Buffalo’s Highmark Stadium are available at under $100 as of Friday morning. While most of them are in the 300-section of the Bills’ arena, a significant number of them can also be found in the lower bowl. The lowest price in the 100s — i.e. near field level — is currently set at $69.

“You typically never see a playoff game this low,” April Martin of Ace Ticket told WBZ-TV this week.

For comparison, the other games played on wild card weekend are much more expensive on the secondary market. The cheapest tickets for the other Saturday game — Las Vegas Raiders at Cincinnati Bengals — come at $178. Philadelphia Eagles at Tampa Bay Buccaneers ($180) and San Francisco 49ers at Dallas Cowboys ($172) are in the same ballpark.

The cheapest games this week other than Patriots at Bills are the Pittsburgh Steelers’ at the Kansas City Chiefs and the Arizona Cardinals’ at the Los Angeles Rams. The lowest prices as of Friday are $104 and $89, respectively. There are only a handful of those offers left, however.

Patriots at Bills, meanwhile, seems to suffer from the unusually chilly weather forecast. Temperatures in the single digits are expected by the time the game gets kicked off at 8:15 p.m. ET on Saturday, which could make it one of the coldest playoff games in NFL history.

That forecast appears to be the main reason for the low prices, especially considering that other factors do not really pass the eye test. The third-seeded Bills are certainly a competitor, while the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has largely not been an issue this year as far as crowd sizes or retail prices are concerned. An oversaturation of postseason football in Buffalo is also not the problem; the team has hosted just two playoff games this century.

It appears fans are simply not thrilled about spending three hours in freezing temperatures, even to cheer on their team versus a long-time division rival.

In unrelated news, Bills fans recently placed a billboard near the Patriots’ Gillette Stadium praising Buffalo supporters as the “best fans in football.”