Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones wants his $1.1 billion stadium to be used for a lot more than just 10 Cowboys games a year, and so he’s actively courting everything from college football to concerts to the NBA All-Star Game to the rodeo.
And on Saturday night, Cowboys Stadium will host a fight featuring Manny Pacquiao, who’s widely regarded as the best boxer in the world, taking on Joshua Clottey. Jones said on a conference call promoting the fight that the presence of Pacquiao in the ring inside Cowboys Stadium demonstrates exactly what he’s trying to do with his venue: host world-class events.
“I have a responsibility to the Cowboys and the NFL, we don’t want to deal with anything but the top,” Jones said. “I made my mind up with the commitment to this stadium that I wasn’t going to be associated with anything but the best and working with the best.”
For Jones, it’s just good business to try to attract major sporting events to the stadium on the 355 days a year that the Cowboys aren’t playing there. No matter how many tickets the Cowboys sell, with 10 games a year they can’t possibly generate enough revenue to pay off a building that cost more than a billion bucks.
And in addition to the added revenue, Jones just likes showing his new stadium off to new audiences.
Promoter Bob Arum, who has put on boxing matches at major locations like the Houston Astrodome and Yankee Stadium in addition to the typical Las Vegas boxing venues, said of Cowboys Stadium, “it is the most phenomenal building I have ever been in.”
That’s music to Jones’s ears.