CFL shuts down Pizza Pizza promotion shut down offering cheap Grey Cup tickets

TORONTO – A Pizza Pizza promotion offering Grey Cup tickets for a bargain price has been shut down by the CFL.

The walk-in special at 16 Hamilton-area Pizza Pizza outlets offered a pair of tickets as part of a $29.99 package that also included a large three-topping pizza, 10 chicken wings, four cans of pop and two dipping sauces.

The league shut down the offer as invalid, but not before it gained considerable buzz on social media. The fact that Sunday’s CFL championship game at Toronto’s BMO Field has not yet sold out has been a talking point, and the optics of the Pizza Pizza special didn’t help the city’s reputation as lukewarm toward Canada’s professional football league.

“Although it may have been made with good intentions, it didn’t have proper authorization,” CFL spokesman Paulo Senra said on his official Twitter account. “Once it was brought to our attention we had the promotion pulled immediately.”

The CFL sent out a release Tuesday stating that less than 2,000 seats remained for the Grey Cup game between the Calgary Stampeders and Ottawa Redblacks. As of Thursday there were plenty of seats available on the secondary market, with low-end seats going for around $100 on StubHub.

BMO Field’s seating capacity has been expanded from 27,000 to about 35,000 for the Grey Cup game.