Well, that's an understatement. If you have not heard, several hundred people who had Super Bowl tickets found themselves without seats yesterday due to snafus in Cowboys Stadium; apparently the Cowboys had tried to squeeze extra seats in to set an attendance record. Unfortunately, local fire officials wouldn't allow people to sit in certain areas.
That left 400 ticketed customers without seats. Some of them were sent outside to watch the game on a big screen -- 4000 people had inexplicably paid $200 each to do that -- small consolation for some who had paid huge dollars to fly to Dallas, stay in hotels, etc. only to not get to see their team play.
The NFL offered them three times face value for their trouble, which hardly seems worth it for those who paid way more than that in the aftermarket or who spent more than that on airfare and accomodations. Today, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell called this mess "a failure" and:
The fans who lost their seats have been promised free tickets for next year's Super Bowl.
Well, that's great -- but what if you're a Packers or Steelers fan who shelled out thousands for that ticket and transportation and your team doesn't make it next year? Sure, you could sell the ticket in the secondary market, but that doesn't really make up for the problem. The NFL needs to give more compensation than this -- maybe add these people to those guys who have been to every single Super Bowl and offer them tickets for life (that article notes that one of them was hospitalized and couldn't make this year's, ending his streak).
Oh, and that attendance record? This mixup meant the record, which was set in 1980 at the Rose Bowl, Super Bowl XIV between the Rams and Steelers, 103,985, was not broken. Because of the ticket mixup, attendance yesterday was 103,219 -- 766 short of the mark; had the ticket problems not happened, the record would likely have fallen.
Nice work, NFL. Try again next year -- if there is a next year.