You don’t have to tell the Minnesota Vikings how big Sunday night’s game is.

In the days leading up to Sunday night’s showdown against the Detroit Lions, the Vikings took the unusual measure of buying around 1,900 tickets for the road game on the secondary market, at about $1,000 apiece, for a total approaching $2 million. The team then turned around and sent an email to season ticket holders, offering the opportunity to buy the tickets at a much lower price point, and in some cases for as little as $200 per ticket.

The rival Lions flagged it, with the team’s ticket office noticing the unusual activity, then finding out about the email. The email said, “As a valued season ticket member, we want to offer you the opportunity to purchase lower-level seats for Sunday night’s game.” The tickets were available on a first-come-first-serve basis, and the team added in the email that they were “intended to be used by Vikings fans and not positioned for resale.”

The Lions contacted the league office about it and were told, per sources, that the Vikings didn’t break any rules in the process of pulling this off.

The seats the Vikings bought are centralized behind the visiting team bench area at Ford Field, which, 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.

Minnesota’s intention, per sources, was first and foremost to give players’ and staffers’ families a better experience at one of the biggest regular-season games in team history. The Vikings already had their mandated road-team allotment of around 600 tickets. But in most cases across the league, and in particular at games of this magnitude, those seats are high up and either in the corners or end zones.

So the team endeavors to give its people a better experience.

“Given the uniqueness of this game, we wanted to offer our stakeholders—staff, family, season ticket members and team partners—an opportunity to attend,” said team spokesman Jeff Anderson in a statement.

That said, not everyone cooperated with the spirit of the gesture, and there was one unique follow-the-bouncing-ball story that got the Lions’ attention.

One ticketholder sold their seat on the secondary market for $724. The buyer then turned around and sold the ticket to Advantage Tickets, a company the Vikings worked with, for $1,200. The Vikings then sold the ticket to a season ticket holder for $300. The season ticket holder, in turn, sold it on the secondary market for $690. That buyer was, potentially, a broker, since the ticket is back on the market again.

Sunday night’s showdown will be the first regular-season game in NFL history featuring two teams coming in with at least 13 wins each, and the first with two teams carrying 28 wins combined. The 14–2 Lions and 14–2 Vikings enter with the No. 1 seed in the NFC at stake, with the loser assigned the fifth seed and a road trip for the wild-card round.

As for the aforementioned stray ticket, maybe it’ll wind up back in the hands of a Lions fan, maybe it’ll go to a Vikings fan. Either way, in a very unique fashion, the battle lines between the fan bases have been drawn.


This article was originally published on www.si.com as The Vikings Have Spent Nearly $2 Million on Tickets for the Lions Game.