The 400 Super Bowl ticket holders who lost their seats at Cowboys Stadium because a temporary seating structure wasn’t approved by a fire marshal will be guests at next year’s Super Bowl, the NFL announced on Monday. Displaced fans will also receive $2,400, triple the face value of the $800 tickets that went to waste.
The move was the league’s initial attempt at damage control from the embarrassing incident, which theyadmitted to knowing about early last week. It’s a fine effort but makes the mistake of presuming that more tickets and money can replace the experience of watching your favorite team in the Super Bowl.
“It’s not the money. It’s the whole issue. We came here for the memories and it’s not happening,” said Wayne Rusch, a Green Bay Packers fan told CNN on Sunday.
League spokesman Brian McCarthy wrote on his Twitter account:
What, no coupon book? I get that the NFL wants to make a nice overture toward the displaced fans, but how are a few hot dogs and Pepsis going to make up for the fact that some people traveled for days and incurred huge costs to watch their favorite team play in the Super Bowl, only to arrive at the game and find out they didn’t have a seat. The $2,400 (which is triple the face value of the $800 ticket) is a fair amount, but I doubt it covers what some people spent on airfare, hotel, car rental, meals and lost time at work. Some of those 400 fans may have bought tickets on the secondary market, where the average ticket was going for around $3,500. One man told Fox40 News in Dallas that he paid a total of $9,000 to attend the Super Bowl.
The cost is only one concern. Folks were understandably livid on Sunday night when they discovered their section was closed. A foam finger wasn’t going to calm them down:
