Suites, club seat prices to rise at Georgia Dome

By Leon Stafford

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

After completing the team's first ever back-to-back winning seasons, Atlanta Falcons officials are raising the prices of some premium seats at the Georgia Dome.

Suites and club seats will cost 4 percent more next season, the Falcons announced Tuesday at the meeting of the Georgia World Congress Center Authority. That means a suite that cost $80,000 last year will increase to $83,200 this fall.

"We think that Atlanta is a growing market, and [there is] a lot of potential out there with small, mid and large companies to sell club seat inventory to," Dave Cohen, the Falcons' vice president of sales, told the authority, which oversees operations of the Dome as well as the GWCC and Centennial Olympic Park.

Super suite seats, on the other hand, will decrease $1,000, from $4,250 each to $3,250. Georgia Dome General Manager Carl Adkins said the move is to make the premium boxes more attractive to buyers.

Tuesday's changes in suite and club seat prices are in contrast to 2009, when prices remained flat or dropped. This time last year, Falcons officials were worried about premium seat sales, saying there was more unsold inventory than the team had had in five years.

Cohen said he is confident he can sell 1,000 club seats this coming season, up from 766 sold for the 2009-2010 season.

Jim Smith, vice president of marketing for the Falcons, was also bullish on advertising for the upcoming season. He said the team has $9 million in inventory at the Dome, an increase over this past season when that number was around $8.6 million.

However, he noted that while advertising revenues are up, they are still below 2007 levels, indicating there is still ground to make up.