Are Meadowlands seats worth the squeeze? by Chris Guenther I'm lucky I get to see as much football as I do. My family owns season tickets for the New York Jets and my father-in-law shares two season tickets to the New York Giants. The only downside to this arrangement until now has been the utter chaos of the Giants Stadium parking lot and the slow ride home from New Jersey after games. But the pending completion of the Jets' and Giants' new stadium ahead of the 2010 season has caused us more stress than excitement. Both sides of the family suddenly face the prospect of dropping some serious cash in a period of economic uncertainty. The experience has forced me to confront a question that has quietly bugged me for some time: Are these tickets worth it? I've loved the Jets since kindergarten year in 1979, when my mom bought me a big, ugly Jets winter coat that won me over. This made me an oddball in a family largely comprised of Giants fans, though they tolerated their team's green-clad co-tenants. I've backed teams ranging from very good to tragically awful. (I'm looking at you, Browning Nagle.) For most of my time as a fan, I enjoyed Jets games on TV. But a few years ago my family secured those season tickets. Suddenly, the rest of my family became Jets fans too. My brother, who lives in New Jersey near the stadium and has two pre-teens, has taken the bulk of the tickets, while I have tried to make a handful of games a season. It's great to know the tickets are there, but they sometimes feel more like a burden than a benefit. What do you do with those mid-December tickets when the forecast calls for freezing rain and the Jets are terrible, their opponent is terrible and there are so many other things you could be doing on that Sunday afternoon? But if you don't go you will have wasted a serious chunk of change and feel like a fair-weather fan ? literally. What's a PSL?A personal seat license needs to be bought by Giants and Jets fans before they have access to season tickets, giving them the rights to tickets for a particular seat. The season tickets themselves have to be bought separately. At the new New York Giants stadium, the one-time fee for a license will range from $1,000 to $20,000 depending on the seat's location. For more information, check out NYG2010.com. But now, if we want to maintain the privilege (and sometimes burden) of owning those tickets, we must quickly answer several questions. Are we willing to pay the up-front cost for a personal seat license required just for the right to keep buying our seats? How many thousands of dollars will we pay after adding that to the newly increased per-game ticket prices? Couldn't I just stay at home in the city and enjoy one of the many fine restaurants just down the street with better food that will have the game on TV, saving time and money? If we don't answer these questions in the next few weeks, we forfeit our future rights to the Jets season tickets. My wife's family faces an even tougher choice. My father-in-law Mark has shared two seats to Giants games with his good friend since the early 1960s, when they played at Yankee Stadium. Each year, the two of them split the home games. A small community formed within their section, with other fans also attending games for decades. Two elderly section neighbors who have gone to games longer than Mark have opted to give up their seats because they can't afford them. Mark's co-subscriber has no appetite for the seat license or the price increases either, so Mark must now shoulder the costs by himself. One of my wife's cousins may step in and pay $5,000 for one seat license and the associated season tickets. But the original seats remain in the name of the family friend, so Mark must also jump through the bureaucratic hoop of transferring the seats into his name. My wife and I still don't know how we fit into all this. Do we contribute to the Jets and Giants tickets? How many and which games for which team should we attend? I'll root for the Giants out of regional loyalty and support for my wife, but I would prefer to keep the Jets tickets. Either way, will I have better things to do than trek out to the Meadowlands on a Sunday afternoon or Monday night or whatever random day of the week they now play football games? On the other hand, will my desire for these tickets change as my son grows older and can attend games with me? I have no answers. But I need some soon. Mark, or someone, must pay the Giants' seat license by Friday. And the sale for Jets seats in an area of the new stadium equivalent to our current seats starts soon after that. __________________
I feel your pain, Kentucky. I think all of us ticketholders do. I'm older than you, I suspect. I've been a fan since 1968 and have had my tickets since the Jets moved to the Meadowlands. I've got four in the Mezz and, to be honest, I simply can't afford to shell out the kind of money they're looking for. It's not that I don't have access to the money, mind you. Oh sure, I can tap my home equity line. I could scrape it up somehow. I could use their financing plans. And I could also do it by financially setting aside many other things, such as helping my kids here and there and/or contributing to my grandchildren's Vanguard Educational IRAs for the future benefit of helping to get them all through college (we have four grandkids now). Of course, this is all within the backdrop of planning my own retirement. The sad part is, I had envisioned being able to take my grandkids to Jets games and have them enjoy them the way my kids did, or perhaps my kids would want to take the grandkids. I wanted it to remain a family thing. Well, it's obvious that I won't be able to do that, at least no in my current seats. But all is not lost, because it looks like I will have the option of going to the Upper Deck. This is what I'll be doing, I'm 95% certain of that at this time. But even that raises interesting questions. What becomes of the people with excellent Uppers if everyone like myself opts to move upstairs? I'm not sure the Jets have prepared themselves for the onslought of requests for Uppers from people exactly like myself. I may be wrong, but there are going to be tens of thousands of people trying to do what I'm doing, running like hell from these outrageous PSLs (and the even more ludicrous annual ticket prices for this seats). At least, as Jets fans, we still do have that option though. The Giants are going to be leaving many of their ticketholders out in the cold, like a gigantic game of musical chairs. And when the music stops, 15,000 of them will be without a seat. Unconscionable. Just simply inexcusable.
Only inexusable as you are not the owner of the NYJs. If you were I am sure you would be doing exactly what Woody & the NYG owner is doing. Sucking every dollar they can out of Joe fan & doing it with a smile & nice words but actually laughing all the way to the bank
Between the Yankees,Mets,Giants and Jets being a NY sports fan has become quite expensive. The baseball teams didn't bother with PSL,s they just raised their ticket prices by 50% or more in some cases. I'll be the first to admit that both baseball teams needed new stadiums as the old ones were very outdated.Giant and Jet ownership didn't need a new facility ask any season ticket holder and they would say their seats are fine for watching the game. However the old Meadowlands had one major flaw,very few luxury boxes. The greed that Woody and the Mara family has shown is shameless. They have forgotten who supported the teams during the lean years(and as a Jet fan for 45+ years there have been plenty :smile. The day may come again when games may be blacked out in the NY area. Being a middle class fan with children to raise means I won't be attending many Jet games after 2009.
:rofl::rofl::rofl: Sports long ago stopped being about the game and the fans and it became all about money. From that point on the average Joe really had no shot.
