The Atlanta Falcons became the latest NFL team to inform season ticket holders of its intention to dramatically cut capacity for the fall, sending a memo Wednesday that they expect to be admitting no more than 30 percent of the 72,000 capacity at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. This means that the team will have a range of between 10-20,000 seats available for home games, assuming local authorities give the green light for having fans in the stands as the state battles a surge of coronavirus cases.
Only season ticket holders will be able to purchase tickets for the upcoming fall in the event fans are allowed, but the team did not offer any guarantees on attendance even for those Personal Seat License-holders.
“With 10 to 20,000 seats, we think it’s most fair to take care of our PSL owners because they’ve been there for us,” said Don Rovak, vice president of sales and service for AMB Sports and Entertainment. “We believe that there’s going to be a high percentage of them that want to go to games and so we want to be able to take care of them for the most games as we can over the course of the season. We’ll know a lot more after the survey (results) come in.”
The survey mentioned by Rovak is one sent with the memo, asking Atlanta Falcons season ticket holders whether or not they had interest in attending the first four games of the season. Depending on the number of fans who reply with their interest, a random drawing will be held to distribute opportunities to attend. A similar survey is planned for the second half of the team’s eight-game home slate.
Those who do have the opportunity to purchase tickets will have options for ticket packages of up to six seats together. If they subsequently opt to resell the tickets they bought, they will be required to sell the entire group of tickets for that particular game, in order to keep with the social distancing policy that the team is basing its as-yet undetermined seating chart off of.
Rovak told reporters that the team estimates that Atlanta Falcons season ticket holders interested in going to games in the fall will likely have the option to purchase tickets for at least one or two of the four initially offered. “It’s not the year to take care of all our fans at every game, unfortunately,” he said. “All we can do is deal with the hand that we were dealt and try to accommodate our fans the best way possible.”
