Out of control ticket pricing in Dallas?

As a season ticket holder for the Chicago Bears, I take special notice when stories come out about ticket prices and the different things teams around the NFL are doing for their fans concerning the game experience.

In anticipation of their new, state-of-the-art stadium currently in construction in Arlington, Texas, the Dallas Cowboys have released their new figures for potential season ticket holders. All lower level Club Seats, which extend from end zone to end zone, cost $340 per ticket. That’s compared to $129, the price for the same seat at Texas Stadium, the current home of the Cowboys.

While the prices alone are a steep enough incursion, to obtain season tickets, a fan must first purchase a Personal Seat License (”PSL”).

A PSL, which is becoming standard for teams across the country, grants the holder rights to purchase tickets year after year for the given stadium and the fan must pay the one time fee of the PSL for each seat “owned.” Only then does the fan pay the ticket price for each seat every year for every game.

The price for Dallas’ PSLs have been set between $16,000 and $150,000 per seat. In contrast, the most expensive price currently for a Personal Seat License in the NFL is at the Carolina Panther’s home, Bank of America Stadium. The cost is $12,000 per seat. When the Chicago Bears sold rights for the new Soldier Field in 2002, the highest price was $10,000 a seat.

For fans that cannot front that kind of money for the tickets, the Cowboys will finance the seats at an eight percent interest rate. And that doesn’t even include parking, which comes close to $1000.

February 1st had originally been set the date for current Cowboys season ticket holders to commit to buying Club Level seats in the new stadium. However, the Cowboys extended that deadline to February 11th.

Many fans in Dallas are already protesting and have said that Cowboy’s owner Jerry Jones is only targeting the wealthy. Sports used to be an affordable event where one could take the whole family for some weekend fun. Now, it seems that a family may have to take out a second mortgage just to be able to get to a game.

Several economists have also said that Jones might be driving up the value of an NFL ticket himself as other NFL teams might begin to lag behind the Cowboys in revenue.

The Cowboys will be moving into their new $1 billion stadium in Arlington before the 2009 season. It will be one of the most expensive sports venues ever built, with 80,000 seats that allows for an expansion to 100,000. It will also have a retractable roof, operable glass doors which allow each end zone to be opened, and a video display board or “JumboTron” in the middle.

While the Cowboys are “America’s Team,” it doesn’t seem that America will be able to afford to watch their team. Good thing I live in Chicago, where I guess the quality of the product they put out on the field or court in any sport just doesn’t match up to those guys in Texas. After all, in Texas, everything is done bigger. Good luck Jerry.

Cowboys Cause for Concern (WFAA)

New Stadium (The Dallas Cowboys)

Upstart football leagues will provide football to fans during and after the NFL season

After painfully enduring the first weeks since August without any football on television (no, I don’t care about the Senior Bowl), I saw an ad in the Chicago Tribune for the Chicago Rush, an Arena Football League team. It got me thinking: what do NFL fans watch during the off-season? Passionate college football fans can follow the recruiting season, but NFL fans who aren’t enticed by the NBA and MLB seasons suffer until the cool breezes return and players report to training camp. Football fans want more.

More may be coming in two big ways. Two rival professional football leagues are starting from the ground up to compete with the NFL, one during the regular season and one during the spring.

The first league, the United Football League (UFL), is an eight-team league created by financier and former United States Football League (USFL) minority owner Bill Hambrecht. This league plans to play games during the NFL season on Friday nights. The league seeks franchises in large metropolitan areas that have no NFL franchises, places like Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and maybe even Mexico City or London. Mark Cuban, current owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has lined up for a franchise already. Figures.

The other league will be the All American Football league (AAFL). This is the more intriguing of the two leagues. The AAFL will have franchises in places with a great college football tradition, places like Florida, Tennessee, and Alabama (all SEC schools I might note). This league will play games on Saturdays in the spring, and will boast the stars of college football that never made it to Sundays. They have committed a wild group of former standouts already, including former Heisman winner Eric Crouch (Nebraska), and national championship quarterbacks Chris Leak (Florida) and Tee Martin (Tennessee). Even John Navarre of Michigan has signed on! John Navarre!

Dissimilar to the NFL, where stories of dog fighting, drug use, other deplorable off-the-field behavior are becoming increasingly common, the AAFL aims to earn a different reputation: the league requires that all players must be college graduates. San Diego entrepreneur Marcus Katz, who has funded the league, says that, “There’s so much negative press about the athletes who get in trouble, about how many of them don’t graduate. Why not set a good example?”

I’ve always been a fan of competition, whether it be in sports or business- the more options, the better. While the pessimistic among us will shrug the possibility that these new leagues might compete with the mighty NFL, both the UFL and AAFL will provide an interesting complement to both the seventeen week NFL season and the high flying act that is the Arena Football League.

I often catch my friends or myself wondering what happened to random college football players that were deemed not gifted enough by NFL standards. Loyal fans and alumni will be excited to watch some the careers of their favorite college players not end with their college eligibility. The AFL and XFL seemed to fold because they lacked player recognition, but the AAFL will fix that problem by luring in big name former college football players.

The UFL on the other hand sounds like a simple plan to get fans from NFL-starved cities to open their wallets for some live professional football action. The UFL will probably also tap into the talent that comes from BCS power schools.

As a person who loves the game of football more than any other, the thought of watching the game played even more in its truest form is truly exciting. It will be interesting to see what the NFL’s next move is, if any.

Read the full article (Time)

Also see: the AAFL website and the UFL on Wikipedia