Cowboys To Use Personal Seat Licenses To Help Finance Stadium

[NT80]

Cowboys to use personal seat licenses to help finance stadium 3:38 PM CT

03:41 PM CDT on Friday, September 14, 2007

By JEFF MOSIER / The Dallas Morning News

FORT WORTH – The hole in the roof at the new Dallas Cowboys stadium in Arlington won’t be the only holdover from Texas Stadium.

Owner Jerry Jones said Friday that the team would use personal seat licenses to help pay its portion of the new $1 billion stadium. The Cowboys revolutionized stadium financing in the late 1960s with use of seat option bonds – predecessors of the personal seat license – to help pay for its current home in Irving.

“We’ve always intended to use them,” Mr. Jones said about the licenses at the new stadium.

He declined to say how much the licenses would raise for the team or how much they would cost the fans.

The Cowboys used seat option bonds or SOBs to help pay for the $35 million Texas Stadium. Fans bought the $250 options, which guaranteed them a chance to buy Cowboys tickets, and then could redeem them 40 years later for $300.

Mr. Jones was in Fort Worth Friday to speak at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon at the Petroleum Club. He was accompanied by his wife, daughter and one of his two sons. Jerry Jones Jr. could not attend because his wife was in labor, Mr. Jones told the standing-room-only crowd.

He also said that he intended to get more of the Tarrant County “movers and shakers” in the seats at his new stadium in Arlington.

Most of the original SOBs were bought by fans from Dallas County when the stadium in Irving was constructed. Today, Mr. Jones said that Tarrant County fans make up only about 10 percent of the people in stands.

He also said after the luncheon that no decisions had been made on naming rights for the new stadium, and there was no timeline for striking a deal.

Mr. Jones’ speech came a day after Forbes magazine announced that Cowboys top their list of most value sports franchise. They estimated the Cowboys are worth $1.5 billion, more than any other team in the world.

[GoMeanGreen1999]

If there was a demand for UNT seats then sure, it might work, but I doubt at this point it would work. There are some colleges now that do this, but there are not a whole lot of them.

[NTPhiKap99]

Mark me down for a few my family still holds about 50 of those original Texas Stadium bonds. If NT can sell bonds to help finance a stadium I'm on board. The profit on the bonds is nothing but getting a new stadium would be priceless.

[UNTflyer]

Fans bought the $250 options, which guaranteed them a chance to buy Cowboys tickets, and then could redeem them 40 years later for $300.

Let me get this right... I give Jerry $250, give him money for 40 years, then get $300 back.

Where do I sign up???

[NTPhiKap99]

Let me get this right... I give Jerry $250, give him money for 40 years, then get $300 back.

Where do I sign up???

As I mentioned the return isn't the reward it's the stadium and rights to the seats that matter.