The Falcons plan to start selling personal seat licenses for their new stadium early next year, team president Rich McKay said Wednesday in providing the most specific timetable yet for the long-in-the-works PSL program.
“(For) club seats, we’ll probably begin to roll out the PSL campaign in January,” McKay said. “We’ll probably do the regular seating four-five months later.”
He again did not answer the question that concerns many Falcons fans: How much will the seat licenses cost?
McKay touched on the PSL plan as he and four other Falcons officials provided an update on the $1.2 billion retractable-roof stadium at an Atlanta Press Club newsmakers luncheon.
“There is no question that in new stadiums, ticket prices go up,” McKay said.
He added that the stadium’s 71,000-seat capacity is designed to ensure a range of tickets “so that people would have price choices, people would have location choices.”
The Falcons have said all of their season tickets in the stadium, regardless of seat location, will require a PSL. Cost will vary depending on location.
In an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution after the Press Club event, McKay said seat-license prices won’t be announced before January, adding that they must be approved by the Georgia World Congress Center Authority board.
At other NFL stadiums built in recent years, PSLs have cost thousands of dollars per seat — and often tens of thousands of dollars per seat in prime locations near the 50-yard line.
Seat licenses — common in NFL stadiums around the country but never before sold for an Atlanta stadium —are one-time fees for the right to buy season tickets in a specific seat.
The proceeds of the Falcons’ PSL sales will go toward the cost of building the stadium, which is scheduled to open in 2017.
McKay said the Falcons next year will schedule meetings “with every single one of our season-ticket holders” in the stadium preview center to go over pricing and financing options.
The Falcons also provided an update Wednesday on construction of the stadium, which is well underway on a site adjacent to the Georgia Dome.
“We have about five more weeks in the foundations (work),” project coordinator Shara Mitchell said. “Then in early February, you’ll see the concrete prefab bowl being placed in the stadium. That’s where your seats are (eventually) installed.
“Then our next big milestone is in late spring (when) we’ll be putting in the main roof steel. That is where the halo (video) board will be supported, and that overall is what holds up the building. … You’ll really start to see the skeleton of the building to take form.”
McKay said the oval video board, which will be installed in the opening of the retractable roof, will measure 64,000 square feet.
“This is a five-story building height hanging in the center of the stadium,” McKay said. “We think it will be a transformational piece as stadiums go.”
