If you’re a Dallas Cowboys season-ticket holder, you’ll soon be getting in the mail a silver envelope, the contents of which will be seat pricing for the new stadium. Warning: Before opening, please sit down.
Got my grubby little hands on the numbers this morning, and, after awaking from a faint of sticker shock, I offer this financial analysis.
Bottom line: 150 percent price increase.
Don’t get me wrong, the state-of-the-art building will be the coolest stadium in the history of sports. It’ll host Tony Romo’s maturation and Super Bowls and Final Fours and Texas-OUs and, someday, Hannah Montana’s “All Growed Up” Tour.
But at first blush the inflation seems preposterous, no?
At Texas Stadium a lower level seat on the 5-yard line costs $129 per game. At JerryWorld it’ll go for $340, courtesy of a $16,000 seat option. By my sportswriter math that’s, let’s see ... carry the three ... times 10 games ... um, well ... a shitload of cash.
Until January 15 the Cowboys sales team -- they brought in former Cleveland Cavaliers boss Chad Estis and 36 reps for the task -- will invite season-ticket holders to its preview center in Arlington. You won’t get a tour of the new stadium, but instead a 45-minute presentation and a sales pitch aimed at softening the blow of the price tags on seats from goal line to goal line.
Depending on where your seat is along the sideline, your option will run from $16,000 to $150,000. That payment gives you the 30-year rights to own, transfer or sell the seats. That payment also signals the beginning of the end of an era.
Goodbye, America’s Team.
Hello, Corporate Cowboys. --Richie Whitt
