Hamilton Ticat tickets to the new stadium are becoming a hot commodity - so much so that the Canadian Football League team is making plans to cap season tickets at 16,000.

According to team president Glenn Gibson, 80 per cent of the team's "premium" seating products - otherwise known as suites and club seats - have already been sold and renewal rates for existing season-ticket holders is more than 90 per cent.

"We are way ahead of budget in terms of where we thought we would be at this time," Gibson said.

In August, the team started renewing season-ticket holders and selling premium seats to the new stadium, which will be called Tim Hortons Field, and will launch its season-ticket push to the general public Nov. 22. Gibson said more than 1,000 deposits have already been received and that the team will cap the number of pre-sold tickets at 16,000 in the 24,000-seat stadium.

"There are going to be a lot of great seats for people to get into," Gibson. "But we want make sure that there are enough seats available for casual sales and corporate things we have responsibilities for."

Gibson believes the 16,000 number is attainable.

"I do. Once the fans see what the experience is going to be like, we expect people to be even more excited," he said.

No legacy funding for Hamilton

Hamilton won't be getting a share of the $70 million in legacy funding recently announced for three other major facilities being built for the 2015 Pan Am Games.

On Tuesday, the provincial and federal governments announced money to keep the Aquatics Centre and Field House in Scarborough, the Velodrome in Milton and the Athletics Stadium at York University open and operational long past 2015.

But the multi-party agreement, signed by the three levels of government, the Canadian Olympic Committee and the Pan Am committee back in 2009, deliberately excluded Hamilton from legacy funding, says Councillor Lloyd Ferguson, who chairs the city's Pan Am Stadium Precinct subcommittee.

While the other three municipalities were building new facilities - and were taking on new expenses to run them - Hamilton was simply replacing the old Ivor Wynne Stadium.

"We already had a stadium, we already had a staff in place to run it. There's no new operating cost to us," Ferguson said Thursday. "We also already had a legacy tenant in the Tiger-Cats."

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Some of the money will also go to support amateur athletics, says Games CEO Ian Troop.

"Part of it was the percentage of elite amateur athletes that needed funding. It was always track and field, cycling and the aquatics centre," Troop said. "It became a question of who had the most usage from an amateur standpoint."