Tom Brady Will Be Responsible for the ‘Biggest Regular-Season Ticket in History’
The 2021 NFL schedule is set to be released Wednesday night, and there is one big game that has many folks with markers in hand ready to circle on their calendar. The game does involve Tom Brady and the Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but it’s not the anticipation of that home game that will take place on a Thursday to kick off the season. It’s a game that one big-time ticket broker is labeling the “biggest regular-season ticket in history.”
NFL schedule to be released as Buccaneers gear for repeat
(Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)
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The NFL is set to release its full 2021 schedule Wednesday night. As has been the case in recent years, the league will make a production out of the schedule announcement, which will air on the NFL Network at 8 p.m. This is the first year the NFL will be playing 17 games.
In recent years, the Super Bowl champions have kicked off the season with a home game on Thursday night. Such wasn’t the case in 2019 when the Green Bay Packers traveled to Chicago to face the Bears to open the campaign. The NFL was celebrating its 100th anniversary and wanted the league’s oldest rivalry to start the fireworks. The New England Patriots had defeated the Los Angeles Rams 13-3 in the Super Bowl.
Brady and the Buccaneers enter the 2021 season as the defending Super Bowl champs. Brady secured his seventh ring last season when the Bucs ran the table in the postseason, winning all of their playoff games, except the Super Bowl, on the road. For the first time in history, a city hosted a team that was playing in the title game.
Tom Brady will be responsible for a very high-priced ticket
According to John Breech of CBS Sports, Week 1 of the NFL schedule has already been released. Brady and the Bucs, as expected, will kick off the year at home. Tampa will host the Dallas Cowboys on Thursday, Sept. 9, at 8:20 p.m. Although the Bucs’ opener will be a highly anticipated game, it pales in comparison to what one ticket broker says will be the “biggest regular-season ticket in history.”
Brady will be returning to the place where it all began when Tampa plays at the New England Patriots. For 20 years, the quarterback called New England home, and five months before the season officially kicks off, the hype for his return is there.
“Biggest regular-season ticket in history for any sporting event,” said Jim Holtzman, CEO of Boston-based Ace Ticket, to WEEI. “This is going to be what every single person wants for their birthday. Who wouldn’t want to go to this game? We never got to say goodbye to Tom Brady. It’s your last chance to see him at home. He never got a sendoff, and who is going to give up their seat? I think when you put those together, like who wants to give up their seat?”
Tickets for Brady’s return to New England will be tough to come by
Those diehard NFL fans who were shut out from attending games in 2020 because of COVID-19 will be itching to get back into stadiums across the league. Teams are expecting to open up to full capacity, allowing those football-starved fanatics to resume tailgating and high-fiving strangers.
Getting into the game involving Brady’s historic return to Foxboro will be nearly impossible unless you want to pay a premium. Holtzman said it’s tough to judge exactly what the market will dictate, but he knows the tickets for that one will be through the roof.
“My industry is coming out of a major pandemic, which completely crashed our industry. It’s crazy to think anything is going to sell for crazy money, but it is going to happen,” Holzman said. “Tickets are going to be really hard to get. Everyone is going to want to go. We don’t really know where it’s going to go, or what the market is going to be. Everyone wants to go and when everyone wants to go, it usually results in high ticket prices.”
