Giants selling individual game tickets - without PSLs

The Giants always have sold some individual game tickets despite their traditionally huge season ticket base, so on its face there was nothing unusual about the news they are doing so this week.

But in an era of personal seat licenses, nothing is as simple as it once was in ticket sales.

So it was that some eyebrows were raised when the Giants made their announcement.

Hadn't they said for months they were sold out of non-club seats?

The team said scattered seats were left open during the process of ensuring New Meadowlands Stadium is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Others initially were unsold for the sake of logistical flexibility as fans were assigned seats in the new building.

There are about 1,400 seats involved, a figure Giants president John Mara said is "significantly less" than the amounts sold on a week-to-week basis in the past, sometimes 3,000 or more based on returns from visiting teams and other factors.

What about the feelings of PSL holders? How might they react if people who did not pay thousands of dollars for one buy seats the old-fashioned way?

To guard against ill will, the Giants gave PSL holders first crack at the tickets Wednesday and Thursday on Ticketmaster.com, followed by former season-ticket holders and waiting-list members Friday and Saturday, then the public Monday.

To account for the fact the tickets will be sold without PSLs, the price of each was raised by $25 - to a range of $110 to $725.

The Giants said they sold about 5,100 tickets of the total 11,200 to PSL owners in the first hour of yesterday's presale, nearly half of the available regular-season tickets available.

Mara said he expects most of the tickets, particularly to the more attractive games, to be purchased by PSL holders.

If some non-PSL holders land tickets next week, he said, it likely will be "on a very limited basis" and likely only for the stadium's inaugural season.

Why not sell the remaining tickets as PSLs?

Mara said doing so at this late stage would be "administratively difficult," but he added most of the seats in question will be sold with PSLs in the future.

The Jets, who are believed to have significantly more seats still to sell than the Giants, have said they do not plan to sell individual game tickets.