I saw the definition of American excess, and it was simultaneously magnificent and borderline disgusting in its lavishness.
If you’re looking for Memorial Stadium-style character and old-school charm, you won’t find it at Cowboys Stadium. If you’re looking for a complex constructed for the video age — note the 160-by-72-foot video board hanging from the roof — check out Jerry’s joint.
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You almost have to see it to believe it. There are carpeted hallways throughout the arena. Padded leather seats in sections other than suites. An 18,000-square-foot gift shop. Cowboyrita drinks for 14 bucks a pop. A total of 3,000 Sony high-definition televisions throughout the arena, with plans to add 2,000 more before the 2011 Super Bowl.Tuesday’s tour took our group into a suite that can be leased for $800,000 a year — which doesn’t include the price of game or event tickets but does offer a large pizza for $90 (no toppings), 12-packs of domestic beer for $66 apiece and a four-pack of Red Bull for $22, among other ridiculously priced items.
At least it didn’t need a government bailout to finish. It didn’t, did it?
I’m a Lions fan, so football and the words “opulence” and “magnificence” are rarely used together.
Capitalism at its finest.
I live within sight of this monstruosity.
To fund it, they raised sales taxes in Arlington, the host city. So this should be partially publicly owned. Do you think that they are going to give a percentage of the revenues back to the community as payback for the raised taxes? Ha! Yeah right!
Parking by itself is $40. People park everywhere illegally to avoid the parking charge, jamming local streets and business parking lots.
The ‘cheap’ tickets start at $150 each. Plus fees.
The parking lots at the local university are being leased out for stadium employee parking on event days, forcing students to park ‘somewhere else’, even though the students prepay a parking fee every semester.
The stadium is too close to the Rangers baseball stadium, causing traffic snarls when there are games or events at both places at once.
You want season tickets? It costs $5000 annual per seat just to have the ‘right’ to buy tickets ahead of non-season ticket buyers.
There is no mass transit to the stadium from either Dallas or Fort Worth.
Cost? A billion dollars and counting.
Almost all professional sports complexes are paid for at least partially by the city they are in. If they don’t the team just moves to a city that will do it.
The teabaggers will mob it. The Cowboys are their team.
As a former life long Cowboy fan I can only say that I hope this bankrupts Jones.
I always wondered how the everyday guy could afford to go see his team…Still wondering.
I hate the Cowboys!
What’s the problem?
Wasn’t enough of the construction money given to unqualified minority contractors? Wasn’t enough paid to “undocumented workers”? Didn’t enough union thugs get their share of it?
Amazing what you can buy when it’s someone else’s money.
I’m FINE with it! As long as the tax payers didn’t build it (ahem) if a private company wants to build a stadium and charge $3,211 for a ticket and people are still willing to pay…then YOU GO GIRL! I’m not going to go. I kinda like football but not for hundreds a game. It ain’t that interesting. But if it is to OTHERS and they want to pay it, so? No one has to go if they don’t want.
Here in SF, the voters have turned down the 49er’s attempts to extort taxes from us. Now they “threaten” to move to Santa Clara. The Mayor unzips the owner’s pants to suck his cock and says he will “do anything” to keep them here. Why? Millionaires hiring millionaires to chase a ball around, paid for by people who can’t quite afford $6 for a flat beer in a plastic cup, but do anyway.
The amount of money brought into a community including increased sales tax by an NFL football team is staggering.
#13 – GigG
The real facts:
From a study conducted published by the University of Utah
For the 36 cities, Baade found:
Presence (or gain/loss) of a Professional Sports Team
* There were 32 cities that gained or lost a professional team during the time period studied.
* Of these only two cities showed any significant economic impacts from hosting their teams.
* For Indianapolis, the economic impacts were positive.
* For Baltimore, the economic impacts were negative.
* For the other 30 cities (including Salt Lake), there were no changes in economic activity.
Change in the number of stadiums or venues
* There were 30 cities that had a change in the number of stadiums and/or arenas.
* Of these, 27 (including Salt Lake) showed no changes in economic activity due to the construction or renovation of these venues.
* For the remaining three (St. Louis, San Francisco/Oakland, and Washington DC),the economic impacts were negative
====
There are many reasons that cities try to get sports franchises, but economics is not really a valid reason.
This is why LA does not have a pro football team. The team owners insist that the taxpayers give them a stadium. To date, LA area voters have refused to approve this extortion.
i remember reading a sports illustrated article about jerry jones while this was being built. the funny line i took from that story was he said “i write a million dollar check per day for the the stadium. that’ll keep your eye on the ball real fast”…talk about an understatement. but, everything is bigger in texas.
Someone tell Jerry that he doesn’t need to make all of his money back the first season. This stadium is beautiful. But the expenses are terrible. The cheapest available seat is $129. All the $75 and $99 seats are sold out. To park a car at the stadium for a regular season game is $75. There is no public transportation to the stadium. Only God knows what they’ll charge for food and beverage.
I am an average Cowboys fan. In the past, I’d go to at least one game a season. No longer. It’s just not worth the hassle of traffic or the expense to see a game live anymore. It goes to show that people have more money than brains around here.
>The amount of money brought into a community including increased sales tax by an NFL football team is staggering.
Zero is a staggering amount. Read up on opportunity costs.
For the money the city is spending, they could have spent it on upgrading infrastructure, or just given everyone in town $300.
Joe sixpack can still afford to see the Packers at Lambeau! If only they were any good… or at least had Favre. Oh well.
May the Cowgirls choke on their bond expenses and their overpriced stadium. The hubris of the “America’s Team” slogan made me want them to have losing seasons until they can’t afford the franchise and have to sell it to someone else.
Texans worship football. I know; I lived in Dallas for over 10 years. But this seems a bit too much. I wonder how it’ll go over… can Jerry Jones overplay his hand? We’ll see.
OMG What a joke! This is a supreme example of how sports players and the organizations involved are in a la-la-land of overly bloated salaries, costs, and self-importance. OMG you can throw a ball X yards — sign a contract for 100million.
Meanwhile people who actually save lives, teach our kids, protect our streets and countries make scraps when put into perspective.
I grew up with sports, I love them. If I could play professionally…wicked! I certainly wouldn’t want or feel right pulling a disgustingly huge salary for it.
Going to a game used to be a family corner stone. Now it’s all just a commercial blood drain. With the prices stated in this article and comments. When going to see a game with your family requires a loan from the bank THERE’S AN ISSUE!!!
Family of 4 to see a game would appear to be in the range of $800-1000 at these prices, including parking, food/drinks, and tickets.
…MESS!
how long ago was it that MOST seats were free, and those in the best locations cost ??..
This is ridiculous..
Any time soon, will they be charging for Little league seats..
#23 – TheBreezeHfx
Since I live in the area of the stadium, we talk about this a lot.
Nobody that I know has the least interest in going to a game, specially at those prices. Free ticket? Sure… well maybe… Actually the locals are pretty much disgusted by the stadium. Arlington raised their sales tax to pay for this, so the residents just took their major purchases outside of Arlington, and others just stayed away. It is a major loser for the city coffers, but for can be nicely disguised by the “it’s the economy” excuse.
But this is business and politics as normal in Texas. It is well known that ‘Dubya’ Bush made his money by taking advantage (actually outright robbing) of the local taxpayers. He also had his baseball stadium taxpayer subsidized, created an investment group that raised a few million, and they walked away with 100’s of millions of dollars in profits, and no repayment of the taxpayer subsidies. There was a scandalous land-grab, forcing residents out of their homes and ranches, and paying them far less than market value, under ’eminent domain’ as determined by a private corporation in which Bush was involved, for ‘future development’… Bush converted a $600,000 investment to $14 million in just a few years, all of it on the backs of the common taxpayer. The Ranger’s stadium in itself was a $60 million taxpayer loss.
What is most amazing is that people keep falling for this “it’s great for the local economy” crap. Well, maybe not so amazing… Texas is a Republican state… enough said about local intelligence.
In case you are interested, here is the seating chart and prices [pdf] for the new stadium for “general seating / individual game”. Notice that the ‘cheap seats’ in the nosebleed section are ‘sold out’, but they are not, since this is ‘standing room only’, and not actually available for sale except when everything else is sold out.
The best seats in the middle of the field, are not priced because they are ‘club seats’ (the white areas in the chart (what a color choice coincidence!!!)) and are even more expensive.
Ridiculous… infuriating… who was this stadium built for? I guess that they expect to recoup the billion dollars by selling lots of $1000 tickets.
And it gets even better: Club level pricing.
Just keep in mind that you have to pay for the right to buy a season pass, plus the seat itself… and this is per seat!
Still trying to get tickets for the Oct. 3rd game. Arkansas vs A&M looks to be sold out.
So, don’t go. If everyone could contain themselves for the tiniest bit of awhile, they’d quit gouging you so. Same with overprices movies, concerts, and everything else we Americans seem compelled to overdo.
Reminds me of the kid in the original Willie Wonka movie – ‘I want it NOW’.
Well as long as people keep paying these prices, the will keep selling them at that price. I don’t really have a problem with the price of the seats, what i do have a problem with is a privately owned sports team using public money to pay for a home for a private business.
The Richmond Braves tried to do that, and Richmond told them to not let the door hit them on the way out. Richmond now doesn’t have a baseball team, but we also don’t have the huge debt either, and the city has not collapsed from not having a minor league baseball team.
But, but, but! We’ve been told numerous times that paying our taxes is the cost of living in a society. We should be happy to help them out. Yeah, right . . .
And for those people who really think these are money makers for the communities, just ask why they raised taxes in other places to pay for the handout in the first place.
What I’m really surprised at are the number of people who are for the bailouts and stimulus packages are against this. What’s the difference?