A “belligerent” Mayor Rob Ford received a warning from Air Canada Centre security staff at the Toronto Maple Leafs game on Saturday night, an ACC source says — and the city council’s budget chief was concerned that he lost the mayor after the game.

Twitter erupted during the game with a rumour that Ford had been kicked out of the building for intoxication — as he was in 2006. The source said Ford was not evicted but was warned for his behaviour.

“What was said on Twitter has merit,” the source said. “(Security) had to ask him to control himself.”

Councillor Frank Di Giorgio, the city budget chief and Ford’s companion for the game, said Ford became “upset” around the end of the first period when he was denied entry into the exclusive Directors’ Lounge, where he had been allowed to go in the past — at least once, last May, with friend and accused drug dealer and alleged extortionist Sandro Lisi.

“I think the mayor was upset that he wouldn’t be accepted into the Directors’ Lounge, for whatever reason — I think he was upset that for the longest time, he’d been allowed to go there, and for whatever reason, there was a special function going on, and he was not welcome there tonight. So he just got upset over it. And I tried to calm him down. And for most of the night he was fine,” Di Giorgio said.

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Di Giorgio said Ford suggested that he was being prevented from entering the lounge because he voted this week against a Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment proposal to expand BMO Field with the help of public money.

“He kept saying, ‘I want to go to the Directors’ Lounge.’ They kept saying, ‘No, no, you can’t go there.’ I don’t think he was yelling at them — he was basically saying it was because he voted against the $10 million. He thought that was the reason he was being barred.”

Di Giorgio said he doesn’t believe Ford was intoxicated, but said Ford “maybe” had something to drink before the game. Ford, who rarely consumes alcohol in public, was photographed holding a Dasani watter bottle in the stands.

“I thought he was fine,” Di Giorgio said. He also said: “I’m just walking back to city hall. I don’t know where the hell he is.

“I feel a bit responsible that I don’t know where he is right now,” Di Giorgio said. “There was a huge crowd surrounding him — I just anticipated that he was just going to jump into a cab. He was about 10, 15 yards ahead of me, and before I knew it, he had jumped into a cab. And some of the people that were surrounding him jumped into the cab with him. So I don’t know where he is right now.”

Di Giorgio added, sounding concerned: “I just tried getting him into a cab, but he said, ‘No, no, I’m fine.’ You know what, I just don’t know exactly where the hell he is. But I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

In fact, Ford also returned to city hall, where he remained in his office alone until 1:30 a.m. He was then escorted down a back stairwell by a city security guard. A taxi met him beside his car in the parking garage. He was spotted around 2 a.m. at Muzik nightclub, one of his favourite haunts.

Photos and videos taken by fans during the game show Ford in the concourse with security employees and police officers nearby. Ford, wearing a Leafs jersey with his name on the back, was swarmed — some people chanting his name and his slogan “Ford more years,” some of them mocking his previous crack cocaine use.

Ford’s chief of staff, Dan Jacobs, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An officer at police 52 Division said he hadn’t “heard anything” about officers responding to an incident at the game.

Ford was kicked out of a 2006 game after he drunkenly berated an out of town couple. He first denied even that he had been at the game, then admitted the story was true.

He vowed in the wake of his crack cocaine scandal last year to give up drinking entirely.

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But he has since acknowledged that he has not done so.

This is at least the fourth incident involving Ford’s public behaviour in the last three months. He was filmed in January ranting profanely about the chief of police in a Jamaican accent, then on St. Patrick’s Day weekend stumbling and swearing outside city hall. He received a jaywalking ticket in British Columbia in February, and was seen later that night speaking “gibberish,” consuming alcohol, and appearing impaired at a pub, according to a source.