Courtesy Toronto Star:

Vanessa Branzanti has never seen a live Argonaut game.

In fact, she’s not really into football. Her sport is rugby, which she plays for the Toronto Nomads women’s team.

Yet, as a favour for her brother, John, she got out of bed at 5 a.m. yesterday morning and by 6 a.m. was sitting in her car in the parking lot across from Rogers Centre, the first person in line to buy tickets for the Argos’ July 3 home opener against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

The Boatmen had announced their first-ever drive-through ticket-selling venture, but the sale was not scheduled to start until 6:30 a.m.

“I didn’t know if there would be a big lineup,” said Branzanti, who agreed that her brother “owes her big time.”

The 33-year-old investment firm employee said she starts work at 8:30 and was concerned that if there was a lineup for tickets she’d be late.

“But I didn’t think I’d be the first person.”

As it turned out she didn’t have to lose two hours of sleep.

There wasn’t exactly a traffic jam trying to get into the Bremner St. lot. By the time the morning session ended at 10: 30 the Argos had sold some 80 tickets.

And after a much-improved afternoon demand the total ticket count reached 512 by the time the drive-through lanes closed at 6:30 p.m.

Argo COO Brad Watters, however, was pleased with the experiment, an idea borrowed from the Edmonton Eskimos.

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