Earlier this month I wrote about the Braves’ current woes and why that may bode ill both for the team and the politicians who engineered the move to Cobb, but don’t forget that we have another team moving in 2017, even if it is just to next door.
The Falcons 2014 season, following a disastrous 2013 campaign, is nothing short of a train wreck. Yes, they still technically have a shot at a division title because the NFC South has been historically bad, but don’t let that fool you – this is a horrendous football team. The coach, Mike Smith, and General Manager, Thomas Dimitroff, are all but certain to be fired after the season, and a complete reconstruction around franchise quarterback Matt Ryan will begin immediately. Luckily, in the NFL rebuilds can happen much more quickly and easily than in the MLB, so owner Arthur Blank has reason to be hopeful that 2015 will see a step forward.
A step forward will be crucial though, because the Falcons face a unique challenge in moving into the new stadium – personal seat licenses.
Personal seat licenses, (or PSL’s for short) are paid licenses that entitle the holder to the right to buy season tickets for a certain seat in a stadium. Basically you own your seat(s) in the stadium, and only pay a small(ish) renewal fee each year as opposed to a whole new season’s worth of tickets. You can sell your PSL to someone else, but if you don’t renew the tickets or sell the license itself, you forfeit the PSL back to the team. The quality of the football team comes into play here because personal seat licenses are quite expensive. The Falcons’ numbers have yet to be released, but for the new Vikings stadium opening next year a PSL for a ‘good’, (lower level) seat runs at about $5,000. So basically, ticket prices will be going up while the team seems to be trending down. Asking season ticket holders to pony up a whole lot more cash to buy into a 30 year seat license isn’t going to be as easy when the team is winning 4 games a year as it would be if they were winning 12. Like the Braves, who may find themselves in a tight spot if the team is still bad in 2017, the Falcons need to win or Arthur Blank’s big plan isn’t going to pay off like he might have hoped.
Regardless of whether the Falcons are any good in 2017 or not, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed comes out of this deal spotlessly.
While many bucked at the thought of tearing down the Georgia Dome, which is still relatively young and nice, those cries went away fairly quickly. The Dome is, after all, a few years older than Turner Field. Two churches, Mt. Vernon Baptist and Friendship Baptist, both old and historically significant, caused a fuss as well, but one that quickly dissipated when their congregations saw the checks with 8 figures on them.
The new stadium is literally a stone’s throw from the Georgia Dome, so there was no outcry about the team leaving downtown for distant Cobb, nor was there a new location and set of problems to deal with there. No entrance or exit ramps, no mixed use condo-plexes, no parking dilemmas, no enraged residents of a distinctly Republican county yelling about backroom deals and raised taxes. The taxpayer funded portion of the stadium will come out of the existing Hotel-Motel tax, which is much more palatable than the vague $300+ million owed by Cobb taxpayers for Suntrust Park which will come from… somewhere…? Heck, compared to the Braves’ move, the new Falcons’ stadium is a walk in the park.
Only problem is, if the Falcons can’t put out the dumpster fire that is their roster and coaching staff, they’ll have a real hard time filling up that shiny new state of the art stadium. The Final 4’s, concerts, and (potential) Super Bowls that it attracts will help, but unless Blank and his team start putting up more W’s than L’s, the Home Depot founder isn’t going to be seeing a great return on his, (or the taxpayers’) investment.
