DALLAS — Football fans have filed a lawsuit accusing the NFL, the Dallas Cowboys and team owner Jerry Jones of deceiving hundreds of people who bought Super Bowl tickets and had no seats, or got seats they felt were inadequate.
The federal lawsuit filed Tuesday in Dallas alleges breach of contract, fraud and deceptive sales practices.
It was filed two days after fans were prevented from having seats at Sunday's game between the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers at Cowboys Stadium because of a problem with temporary seats.
One of the plaintiffs is a Cowboys season ticket-holder who said some of Jones' biggest-spending fans were promised access to Super Bowl tickets and ended up with obstructed views on metal folding chairs.
"Unfortunately, not all of the ticket-holders to Super Bowl XLV got what they bargained for or what was promised to them," the lawsuit states.
Spokesmen for the Cowboys and the NFL had no comment.
The NFL had announced hours before the game that about 1,250 temporary seats were deemed unsafe, and the league scrambled to find new seats for about 850 people. The remaining 400 were forced to watch the game on TV monitors or from standing-room-only areas.
The lawsuit alleges that Cowboys fans who paid $100,000 per seat just for the right to buy season tickets were never told that their Super Bowl seats would be temporary with obstructed views. The lawsuit says the team has offered no compensation for "illegitimate seats."
The NFL has said that the roughly 400 fans have two options. The first is a ticket to next year's Super Bowl and a cash payment of $2,400, three times the face value of the ticket. The second is a ticket to any future Super Bowl, along with round-trip airfare and hotel accommodations.
The Packers beat the Steelers 31-25 in the Super Bowl.