The NFL claimed on Super Bowl Sunday that 850 of the 1,250 Super Bowl ticket holders whose temporary seats weren’t available were well taken care of and received comparable or better seats. But members of that club of 850 keep coming forward to dispute that claim.
Packers fan Peter D’Amico tells the Green Bay Press-Gazette that he arrived at Cowboys Stadium more than seven hours before kickoff on Sunday and still barely got in on time. The NFL finally found him a fourth-deck seat after he stood in lines all day and missed all the pageantry that is supposed to be part of the Super Bowl experience.
“When you make all these preparations and have this vision of how it’s going to go, you certainly don’t envision this kind of nightmare at Jerry World,” D’Amico said.
Also troubling is D’Amico’s description of the atmosphere at the Cowboys Stadium ticket gate, where the 1,250 fans were instructed to go to find out where they would be sitting (or in some cases standing) during the game.
“A couple of people stood in the center of groups of us speaking loudly about what was going on, but anyone in the back of the area couldn’t hear them,” he said. “It became almost a riot-type atmosphere. Some people were so upset they were ready to do something. . . . It started getting kind of ugly.”
Wow. If the NFL and the Cowboys were going to push to set a new Super Bowl attendance record, shouldn’t they have prepared for that by having sufficient security and ticket personnel on hand to organize the crowds and avoid an ugly, riot-type atmosphere?
D’Amico said he isn’t sure what kind of compensation the NFL is offering, but, “I’m willing to listen to whatever they’re trying to offer us.”
What the NFL has offered so far, a refund of the face value of the ticket or a ticket to a future game, doesn’t seem like enough for what fans like D’Amico went through.