Vikings players and coaches know their best path to the Super Bowl is to beat the Lions on Sunday night. And so does the Minnesota ticket office.
According to Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer, the Vikings organization went on the secondary market this week and spent nearly $2 million to buy approximately 1,900 Ford Field tickets behind the Minnesota bench. Then, the Vikings did their best to offer those seats to Minnesota fans at a significant discount, telling fans in an email that the seats were “intended to be used by Vikings fans and not positioned for resale.” Their best wasn’t good enough.
In an unbelievable plot twist, the Lions got their hands on the email offering the lower-level seats, which as Breer noted, “obviously would cut into the percentage of home fans in the stadium and could also work to help the Vikings’ ability to communicate on the sideline.”
Apparently, a desperate Minnesota email recipient accepted the Vikings’ offer but turned around and sold the ticket back on the secondary market for $724 – kicking off a capitalistic chain of events that would make Alexander Hamilton leap out of his Manhattan grave. According to Breer, that hot-potato ticket is still available.
No regular-season game in NFL history has featured teams that have combined for more than 25 wins. The Vikings (14-2) and Lions (14-2) will obliterate that record on Sunday Night Football (8:20 p.m. ET, NBC). The winner gets the No. 1 seed in the NFC, the conference’s only first-round bye and homefield advantage throughout the playoffs. The loser has to take its 14 wins on the road in the first round of the postseason as a wild-card team.
What’s fascinating is that the two teams could easily meet again in the playoffs. And if that happens, expect more of the same shenanigans. After all, the NFL answered the Lions’ queries by saying the Vikings did not break league rules.
For more information on the Vikings and Lions, visit the Minnesota and Detroit team pages at ProFootballPost.com.
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