I just went to a Novillos a couple weeks ago in Madrid. Since it was my first bullfight, I didn't notice the quality of the bullfight to be lacking. Probably like someone going to a minor league baseball game who's never seen baseball before - wouldn't know that the skill level wasn't as high.
The tickets were about half the price of a regular bullfight, we were about 7 rows up in the "sun and shade" section, which cost about 15 euros each. Las Ventas, which holds about 20,000 people was maybe half full.