Who wouldn’t be upset if they had bought a Super Bowl ticket and then never were able to actually have a seat at the game?
According to the NFL, they gave the fans free food, postgame access to the field and let fans watch the whole game on monitors near the field.
One of the 400 fans who was without a seat made the situation sound like it wasn’t really all that the NFL said it was cracked up to be.
Dan Powell told CNBC that the NFL was not communicating a great deal with the fans who had to go through a lot even before the game started to just get in the stadium.
“There was no food at all, you couldn’t even order down there,” Powell told CNBC’s Darren Rovell. “The bartender, at his own discretion, gave a few of us some free drinks because he felt bad for us. But at halftime, the bartender said, ‘The tab is closed, you have to buy drinks now.'”
“The reality is we were herded down there with no answers, told to wait and then heard nothing for the entire game,” Powell said.
In a statement released on Tuesday by the NFL, they are giving the fans two options in replacement of the suffering they went through at the Super Bowl.
1. “A free ticket to next year’s Super Bowl game plus a cash payment of $2,400 (three times the face value of the Super Bowl XLV game ticket held by the individual). The ticket to next year’s Super Bowl game is transferable.
2. One free ticket to a future Super Bowl game of the fan’s choice, including next year’s if so desired, plus round-trip airfare and hotel accommodations provided by the NFL. This offer will be personalized in the ticketholder’s name and is not transferable.”
As of right now, all 400 ticketholders are still being sought after so they can be repayed.
Is the NFL is trying to avoid a possible lawsuit? It’s likely that the league is using this as another way to save face in the public relations light.
