Football fans traveling to Dallas for the Super Bowl this year have had to endure freezing temperatures, ice storms and canceled flights, but the last thing they probably anticipated was that the NFL would run into a ticketing problem. But apparently, that’s exactly what happened.
Workers scrambled to install temporary seats inside Cowboys Stadium today, February 6, to accommodate thousands of additional fans, but according to the league there are an undisclosed number of fans who will not be able to attend the game, and the league is offering refunds of triple the face value of their $600 tickets.
Details of how the game became oversold, and how many additional seats the league was trying to have installed, have not been disclosed. In addition, exactly how many fans were shut out of the game is also not known.
“Most of the fans affected will have been accommodated in their seats or relocated to similar or better seats. Fans who are not accommodated with seats inside the stadium will each receive a refund of triple the cost of the face value of their ticket. We regret the situation,” the league said in a statement. The league was considering giving some fans seats that otherwise would have been occupied by NFL officials.
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, the unofficial host of the game because it is being played in his $1 billion stadium, had hoped to approach or set a new Super Bowl attendance record with more than 100,000 people. In addition, the league was even charging fans $200 to watch the game on big screen televisions in a standing-room-only plaza outside of the stadium.
This year’s Super Bowl, between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Green Bay Packers, was eagerly anticipated because of the storied histories of both teams, and fans from Wisconsin and Pennsylvania had been traveling en masse to Dallas for the game.
The NFL having to pay exorbitant ticket refunds is similar to what happened to StubHub in the days leading up to this year’s BCS National Championship game. The secondary ticketing leader was forced to buy back tickets for high costs from some fans to fulfill other ticketing orders.
