PRICES AT A GLANCE
The costs of buying Falcons season tickets in the new stadium:
Lower bowl: Non-club seats range from $100 to $175 per game, plus one-time personal seat license (PSL) fees of $2,500 to $5,500 per seat. Club seats, which include most lower-bowl sideline seats, range from $345 to $385 per game plus PSL fees of $15,000 to $45,000.
Mezzanine level: Non-club seats range from $95 to $150 per game, plus PSL fees of $2,500 or $5,500. Club seats are $325 per game, plus a PSL fee of $10,000.
Upper bowl: Non-club seats range from $55 to $95 per game, plus PSL fees ranging from $500 to $2,000. No club seats are in the upper bowl.
Note: Club seats are defined as the approximately 7,500 seats that come with access to lounges, dining spaces and other amenities. Non-club seats are the 60,000-plus other seats.
Falcons season tickets for non-club seats will cost from $55 to $175 per game, not including the required personal seat licenses, when the team moves into the new downtown stadium in 2017.
By comparison, season tickets for similarly located non-club seats in the Georgia Dome currently range from $41 to $122 per game.
The Falcons wouldn’t release their 2017 season-ticket prices earlier this week when they announced a second round of prices of personal seat licenses, which are one-time fees for the right to buy season tickets. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution subsequently obtained the ticket-price list from a season-ticket holder, who received it from the Falcons this week.
Among the season-ticket prices for the stadium’s approximately 60,000 non-club seats:
- Lower-bowl sideline seats between the goal lines and roughly the 15-yard lines will cost $175 per game, compared with $122 currently, a 43-percent increase. (Some lower-bowl non-club seats cost $175 in the Georgia Dome, but those are on or near the 50-yard line and will become much pricier club seats in the new stadium. Club seats have access to lounges and other amenities.)
- Lower-bowl end-zone seats will cost $115 and $100 per game, compared with $89 and $75 currently, increases of 29 and 33 percent.
- Upper-bowl sideline seats will have a top price of $95 per game, compared with $86 now, a 10-percent increase.
- Upper-bowl end zone seats will cost $65 and $55, compared with $41 currently, increases of 58 and 34 percent.
(Current prices are based on 2015 season-ticket prices shown on the Falcons’ web site this week.)
Valerie and Reginald Fitzpatrick, Falcons season-ticket holders since 2008, this week bought two seats in the new stadium in roughly the same location as their current seats.
“Currently for both seats, we pay a little over $2,000 (per season). In the new stadium, we’ll be paying a little over $3,000,” Valerie Fitzpatrick said. In addition, the new seats require personal seat licenses of $5,500 each, which she said were acceptable because of the financing options.
“My husband and I just believe we are stakeholders in the Atlanta Falcons, so we went on and got on board,” she said. “I went in with the expectation that we would pay more. I think the Falcons did a good job of letting us know it was going to be more money.”
Ted Koch, a Falcons season-ticket holder since 1987, said he is still contemplating whether to buy two seats in the new stadium comparable with his current location. If he does, he said, the tickets would increase from about $120 to $175 per game, plus a $5,500 PSL fee each.
“The ticket-price thing doesn’t bother me because (the Falcons) are guaranteeing they’re going to freeze that for the first three years in the stadium, and every year I usually take a little bit of a ticket-cost increase,” Koch said. “But never having had to pay a PSL, and being asked for five-plus grand for the privilege of buying tickets, especially as long as I’ve had tickets, is kind of disappointing to me.”
He met with a sales rep Wednesday, the day after the non-club seats went on sale with PSL fees ranging from $500 to $5,500.
The Falcons argue the new stadium’s ticket prices can’t be fairly compared with the Georgia Dome’s.
“This stadium is not the Georgia Dome, so you’re not comparing apples to apples from the standpoint of location, from the standpoint of amenities or anything like it,” Falcons President and CEO Rich McKay said.
“So I don’t like when you’re going to try to get to ‘Well, my seat was this’ and ‘My seat was that,’ because your seat won’t exist. The Georgia Dome seat you had will not be in this new stadium.”
The Falcons said 26,000 seats in the new stadium have prices of $95 or less per game (plus PSL).
At the other end of the spectrum, the Falcons said 54 percent of the 7,500 club seats have been sold since January, generating $77 million in contracted PSL revenue.
The club seats are mostly located in the lower bowl along the sidelines, with some on the mezzanine level. As previously reported, season-ticket prices for club seats range from $325 to $385 per game, plus PSL prices of $10,000 to $45,000.
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