With a key deadline recently passed, the Falcons have collected about $9 million in down payments on personal seat licenses for their new stadium.
That figure — $9.04 million as of Wednesday — was obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution from the Georgia World Congress Center Authority, the state agency that will own the stadium.
The Falcons won’t say how many seat licenses they have sold, and the GWCCA isn’t scheduled to receive that information from the team until the end of next month.
Down payments have ranged from 10 to 33 percent of the seat-license amount, according to numerous buyers interviewed by the AJC. Most said they put down the minimum of 10 percent.
Personal seat licenses, or PSLs, are one-time fees for the right to buy season tickets for decades. They are among the more controversial aspects of the new stadium, which is slated to open in 2017 and quickly is taking shape next to the Georgia Dome.
So far the Falcons have attempted to sell PSLs for the stadium’s 7,700 club seats, at prices of $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 and $45,000. The club seats offer access to swanky lounges and other amenities. The seats are located roughly between the 20-yard lines in the lower level and between the 30-yard lines above the suites in the mezzanine level.
A deadline passed earlier this month for current season-ticket holders in comparable seat locations to decide whether to buy the club-seat PSLs.
The $9 million in down payments indicate the Falcons have seat-license contracts worth well into the tens of millions of dollars at this point. But that still would leave the team with many club-seat PSLs to sell. One of the more frequent complaints about PSLs is that they price many long-time season-ticket holders out of their accustomed seat locations.
Sales efforts currently are focused on season-ticket holders elsewhere in the Georgia Dome who have expressed interest in upgrading to club seats in the new stadium, according to the Falcons.
A ramp-up in sales efforts will come in June, when the Falcons expect to announce PSL prices for the 60,000-plus other seats. Those will be less expensive than any of the club seats, but the Falcons have declined to be more specific. All seats sold as season tickets in the new stadium will require a PSL in some amount, the team has said.
Meanwhile, construction of the stadium continues to pick up steam, with an average of about 800 workers now on site daily, according to Falcons project executive Bill Darden.
The peak will be close to 2,000 workers on site daily by some point next year, he said.
Already workers have poured about 6,200 truck loads of concrete, Darden said.
“By the time we pour out our concrete superstructure, which will be sometime probably in the early fall of this year, it will be enough concrete to (fill) 91 miles of concrete trucks backed up bumper to bumper,” he said.
Next week, Darden said, masonry work for some interior walls will begin, as will installation of “pre-cast stadia” — the start of the structure on which the stadium seats will be bolted by 2017.
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