Price cut helps Jets sell most of remaining PSLs
A view of the completed field at the new Meadowlands Stadium, which will host the Jets and the Giants beginning in 2010. (Dec. 8, 2009) Credit: Newsday/Alejandra Villa
The Jets have sold about 75 percent of the 9,000 previously unsold personal seat licenses on which they slashed prices June 11, Matt Higgins, their executive vice president for business, said Tuesday.
"I can say it's been the fastest pace of sales we've experienced since maybe the height of the playoffs," Higgins said.
"I've said it before but now I can say it with even more confidence, with 100 percent conviction: We will be sold out before Opening Day."
Higgins said the team likely would have club seats to sell even after the season begins Sept. 13, but those do not count for the purposes of NFL blackout rules.
The Giants say they have sold out of non-club seats but they, too, have club seats left to sell; they plan an advertising campaign in the coming weeks to showcase their availability.
The Jets reduced prices by up to 50 percent in three slow-selling areas covering about 18,000 seats, with PSLs dropping in those sections from $5,000 to $2,500, from $4,000 to $2,500 and from $15,000 to $10,000.
The approximately 9,000 fans who already had purchased seats in those sections received refunds to reflect the reductions.
Higgins said many fans upgraded to PSL seats from the previously sold-out, non-PSL sections in the upper deck, allowing the team to tap into a waiting list it had for the upper deck.
The price reduction cut into the originally projected revenues from PSLs, but Higgins said the team still is in "great shape" overall in its ability to pay for its half of the $1.7-billion stadium.
He said the PSL reduction was "the right decision at the right time. Clearly some fans were waiting for the price to be adjusted to the level they thought was appropriate."
