TallySaint

Saints officials say box office problems solved


By LES EAST
Special to The Advocate

The worst should be over as far as long lines at will call for tickets to the New Orleans Saints games at Tiger Stadium.

Mike Feder, Saints director of regional sales and marketing, said Monday that the hours-long wait that many fans experienced for the Saints-Dolphins game Sunday won't be duplicated at any of the remaining three games in Baton Rouge.

Feder said that 2,500 accounts handled through TicketMaster and 1,500 accounts handled through the Saints had to be processed Sunday. With the average account including multiple tickets, and many multiple games, several thousands of tickets were being claimed at will call.

"The big thing is there has never been a game like this as far as the total numbers," Feder said. "So many people were coming to get four-game packages. That won't occur this week. It'll be mostly single-game issues."

Feder said the high volume of business at will call was caused by several factors. One was that the Saints stopped mailing tickets 10 days before the game because of the unreliability of mail service in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Another was that so many fans waited until Sunday to pick up their tickets.

The Saints anticipated the crush and opened will call five hours before kickoff instead of the normal three. They'll do the same for this Sunday's game against the Chicago Bears.

Tickets that are ordered through the Saints can be picked up during the week at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center. Those ordered through TicketMaster can be picked at the River Center. Bring your account identification number with you.

The Saints issued a statement late Monday saying they had staffed 23 ticket windows for the game against the Dolphins. They added many fans who weren't the account holder trying to make exchanges. The Saints have restricted exchanges to the account holder to protect the account holder from fraud.

Information on exchanges is available at www.neworleanssaints.com and requested exchanges should be sent to exchange@saints.nfl.com.

Tickets for the remaining games in Baton Rouge, including Sunday's game against the Bears, the Dec. 4 game against the Buccaneers and the Dec. 18 game against the Panthers, are available by calling Ticketmaster at 1-800-877-0898 or going to www.neworleanssaints.com or www.ticketmaster.com.


http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/...i_box001.shtml


8)

My Guardian Angel wears a hard hat.