Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Seat licenses?

Adding to what my colleague Mr. Last said back in January in the Wall Street Journal, Ben Casselman keeps the ball rolling in his recent Journal entry, "Luxury Strikes Out". Just one tidbit:

Top-level ticket holders can actually park inside the [Dallas Cowboys] stadium building, then relax in the more than 200,000 square feet of clubs and lounges. The priciest boxes are at field level, with patios just feet from the Cowboys bench. Players will pass through the attached club on their way to the field.

Season tickets along the sidelines at Texas Stadium used to cost $129 a game, compared with $340 a game for similar seats in the new stadium. To earn the right to buy season tickets, fans must buy "personal seat licenses"--a one-time, up-front fee that can run as high as $150,000 a seat.

Dallas-area real estate agent Linda Taylor says she was shocked to learn that the $130-a-game Cowboys seats she'd had for years at the old Texas Stadium would jump to $340 in the new building--and require a $35,000 seat license.

"It just seemed crazy, especially for true fans. It's different if we were a corporation," she says. Ms. Taylor and her family ended up paying license fees of $16,000 per seat for seats that aren't as good as their old ones.


I mean, really? (Needless to say, both Casselman and Last are must-reads.)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"It just seemed crazy, especially for true fans. It's different if we were a corporation," she says. Ms. Taylor and her family ended up paying license fees of $16,000 per seat for seats that aren't as good as their old ones.

Apparently, the market will bear it. if she really thought it was crazy, she would not have shelled out the $16k.

I do think it's crazy, but then I would never pay these prices. So, why should I care. As long as there are people willing to pay these prices, why shouldn't the team charge these prices?