PWHL Montreal to break women's hockey crowd record as Bell Centre sells out in minutes
Tickets selling for at least 3 times original value already flooding reseller sites
Sporting a purple and white tuque with the letters PWHL, Bethany Haeseler's passion for women's hockey is palpable — and she says it's uplifting to see women athletes finally getting their due.
"It's emotional in ways that I didn't anticipate it being. I feel so fulfilled and so happy and so energetic because their success is our success," said the Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL) superfan.
For the first time since the start of its inaugural season in January, the PWHL will be making its debut at the Bell Centre — home of the Montreal Canadiens and the biggest hockey arena in North America.
General tickets for the April 20th game between Montreal and Toronto went on sale Wednesday at 10 a.m. ET and sold out in under 20 minutes, setting the league up to break the world record for largest attendance for a professional women's hockey match.
Pre-sale tickets were also snapped up in the past few days, with Tuesday's batch selling out within hours.
Tickets are now cropping up on popular reseller platforms at significant markups and are selling almost as fast as they're appearing.
Sites like billet.ca and Stubhub are offering some seats at more than four times the original Ticketmaster value.
All tickets were originally under $100, but a section that once offered seats for $54 is now $198 on Stubhub, with the most expensive section priced at nearly $450.
Haeseler, a season ticket holder for Montreal's PWHL team, says she can't wait to see her home team make history, adding the crowd is bound to "blow the roof off the place."
"I'm sentimental about it already and I'm so proud of our team," she said.
"They deserve to be on TV. They deserve to be streamed. They deserve to fill an arena and have it sold out and to be given the opportunity to do so."
Fans of the league, not just teams
The league's current attendance record is held by Toronto, which hosted Montreal at the Scotiabank Arena in February in front of 19,285 fans.
The Bell Centre has a maximum capacity of 21,105.
The Montreal PWHL team normally plays at the Verdun Auditorium, which has a capacity of 3,650 seats. They've played a few games at Place Bell in Laval, which has about 10,000.
But Heidi Van Regan, a PWHL fan club founder, says that doesn't satisfy the public's appetite.
She says the ultimate goal would be to have a purpose-built arena that is "exactly the right size for the women's game."
Van Regan says she's followed women's hockey before, but she's never seen such interest in terms of the professional game.
"Instead of people rooting just for their home team, so many of the fans are watching every single game … and know about every team," she said.
"It's really the league that has fans, not just the teams, and that's really exciting to see."
'The records keep coming'
Jared Book, a veteran Montreal hockey journalist and deputy managing editor at Habs Eyes on the Prize, has covered women's hockey for the past 20 years.
He says he's shocked by the PWHL's success, especially in the league's infancy.
"I always knew there was a market for women's hockey, but I didn't think that it would be growing this fast this soon," he said.
Book says it's more common to see records set for home opener games and attendance slowly taper off, but "the records keep coming and I think that's significant in its own right."
Based on what he's seen at previous games in Verdun and Laval, Book says people should prepare for more energy at the Bell Centre than what you'd see for a generic NHL game.
"Women's hockey crowds are always more energetic — it's less people in business suits and more just fans that want to be there," he said.
Book says he doesn't expect the Bell Centre to become the team's permanent home, but given his surprise at the league's growing popularity, he isn't ruling anything out.
"Maybe I just underestimated the women's hockey community and what happens when you give attention to it."
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