As
the team’s fourth season in Arlington wraps up, seats at the Dallas
Cowboys’ showplace are selling as well as they did in year one,
according to ticket resellers. Attendance this year is second only to
the inaugural season in Cowboys Stadium, with the record-setting debut
crowd in 2009 accounting for almost all the difference.
The few
soft spots in the market appear to be at the high-dollar end. Personal
seat licenses — which allow buyers to purchase tickets in more
attractive areas of the stadium — are sometimes selling for a loss. A
number of suite holders also have been unable to pay their bills.
Bill
Farrell, who sells Cowboys and Dallas Mavericks tickets on eBay, was
among those initially concerned about ticket demand at the new stadium.
Cowboys Stadium has the league’s largest capacity, with some of the
highest ticket prices and most expensive seat licenses.
“With a
stadium as big as this, you worry the pricing might not hold,” he said.
“The first year was good, but you didn’t know what to make of it.”
Farrell
said he was “snakebit” last year by the work stoppage, back-to-back
disappointing seasons and a shortage of good opponents at home. But he
said ticket demand bounced back this year and improved as the season
progressed.
ESPN’s analysis calculated the Cowboys’ home
attendance this year at 87,954, making it tops in the league every year
since moving to Arlington.
There’s no doubt that many ticket
buyers in the first couple of years were partially motivated by the
grandeur of the stadium. Fans wanted to see the giant arches, the glass
end zone doors, the luxurious clubs and the world-record video board
(now getting supplanted by a larger one in Houston’s Reliant Stadium).
Soon
after Cowboys Stadium opened, onlookers gathered in the parking lots to
take pictures, as they would a typical landmark. Stadium tours have
become a major tourist attraction.
But sellers say the ticket market has returned to the basics: A winning team sells tickets; a losing team doesn’t.
“That
[new stadium attraction] was about the first two years,” said Scott
Baima, owner of Texas Tickets. “After the second year, I think everybody
now depends on the record.”
The Cowboys are now tied for the NFC
East lead and won five out of their last six games. The playoffs are a
possibility for the first time since 2009.
“Up until this winning
streak, it’s been an average year, but now we’re in the hunt,” Baima
said, adding that Sunday’s game against the New Orleans Saints “wouldn’t
be popular if we were 4-10.”
Rivals’ following
The Cowboys aren’t the only attractions. Sellers said the strength and following of the team’s opponents drive sales.
Last
week’s game against the playoff-contending Pittsburgh Steelers drew
95,595, the largest crowd of the season — and one that featured an
unusually large Steelers contingent. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones shot down
speculation that Pittsburgh fans made up nearly half of the stadium
crowd. He said the team calculated that about 15,000 fans were there for
the Steelers.
Baima said that was also the Steelers fans’ travel
game, which could account for the unusually boisterous visitors. Fans of
some teams will pick a specific road game to attend, with the goal of
trying to pack as many as possible into that stadium.
Sunday’s
opponent, the Saints, often attract large numbers of fans when they play
the Cowboys. Next season, the Green Bay Packers and the Peyton
Manning-led Denver Broncos are expected to attract equally large crowds
in Arlington.
“Next year, I think the market for tickets will be
good,” said Hank Wendorf, owner of Ticketsource.com, which is located
across the street from the stadium. “But I think some of that will be
influenced by how they finish up this year.”
Seat license market
The
personal seat license market is more complicated. The licenses give
fans the right to buy the same seats at Cowboys Stadium for the first
three decades in Arlington. They are purchased separately from the
tickets.
Preston Hill, president of STR Marketplace, which
operates seat license resale websites, said the Cowboys market is
different than most others in the NFL. He said Dallas was the first team
to maximize the price of its seat licenses, rather than trying to sell
them out as quickly as possible.
“There is a different dynamic,”
Hill said. “The Cowboys were probably the first to put theirs on the
market at what I’d say is at market value vs. what we’d call a
market-clearing value. … From the outside looking in, the Cowboys
probably priced them at what was probably a fair market value at that
time.”
If that’s true, that means there isn’t much room for profit to be made reselling seat licenses.
At a few stadiums, the licenses have turned out to be a good investment. Citing STR Marketplace data, a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
story published last year said upper-level seat licenses at the
Steelers’ stadium initially sold for $250. Now they cost an average of
more than $4,300 on the secondary market.
Cowboys Stadium seat
license costs start at $2,000 and can run up to $150,000 for seats with
suite-like amenities. Even at those prices, Hill said, most of Cowboys
Stadium’s licenses aren’t deeply discounted.
“Most of the locations hold their value,” he said. “There aren’t that many that sell significantly below what face value was.”
Prices vary greatly
At
personal seat license marketplaces, such as PSLSource.com, the asking
prices vary greatly. Some upper-deck licenses were on sale for a modest
discount, while other license owners are asking double the face value or
more. In the more expensive club seats, the prices were often just
above or just below face value.
Farrell said that in some cases,
he’s seen fans who financed their club-level seat licenses essentially
give them away just to unload the long-term financial obligation. He
said that’s more likely to happen with the most expensive seats when
some people can no longer afford them.
Others who rented suites
have gotten into similar financial jams. The Cowboys have sued about a
dozen suite holders for failing to pay.
Wendorf said he’s bought
and sold a small number of Cowboys seat licenses and never took a loss.
But he said he wasn’t dealing in the most expensive ones and could
afford to be patient.
“The only ones I sold, I made money on them,
but I’m also not a distressed seller,” Wendorf said. “I’m sure there
are people who sold them at a loss, but that probably because they had
to get them sold quickly.”