Hours before kickoff, Cowboys Stadium still wasn’t ready the crowd.
Several people who purchased tickets for temporary seats located above four entryways and in the upper deck on the west end were denied access to their seats.
While the NFL said in a statement the installation of the seats had not been fully completed, the Arlington Fire Department’s fire marshal had deemed more than 1,000 of them unsafe.
“The safety of fans attending the Super Bowl was paramount in making the decision and the NFL, Dallas Cowboys and City of Arlington officials are in agreement with the resolution,” the NFL said in a statement. “We regret the situation and inconvenience that it may have caused. We will conduct a full review of this matter.”
Fans in the affected areas waited in a fenced off area for the matter to be resolved. They became increasingly unruly and there were chants of “Jerry Sucks!” and “NFL Sucks!”
“This is absolutely ridiculous,” said Glen Long, a Pittsburgh Steelers season-ticket holder who flew in for the game from Baltimore. “That would be fraud anywhere in the world if you sold tickets to an event that you knew you didn’t have. That’s just wrong.”
Odett Karam, a Packers fan from California said she didn’t want a refund. She just wanted to get into the game and see the game.
Gerry Grillo, from New Jersey, said he paid $3,000 for a ticket with a face value of $600.
“We’ve been in a holding area for two hours,” he said after finally being let in the stadium. “Two hours!”
The league said it was able to shuffle things around to accommodate about 850 of the temporary seat ticket holders. They were placed in similar or better seats.
However, about 400 people who paid $600 to $900 for their seats didn’t get one.
Shortly after kickoff, the NFL let those people watch the game either on monitors from inside the field-level club behind the Pittsburgh Steelers bench or in person on standing-room platforms in each corner of the stadium.
The NFL said those fans would also each receive a refund of triple the cost of the ticket.
Fans complained that wasn’t nearly enough, especially given what they had doled out for travel and hotel costs.
“They took us to a bar,” said Paul Colavecchi, a displaced fan from Clearfield, Pa., who came to Texas with his sister.
“That’s terrific,” he added sarcastically. “That’s why we fronted five grand for this trip — so we could watch the game in a bar. I didn’t have to take a plane trip to Texas to watch the game on TV, and I certainly didn’t buy a ticket so I could watch the game in a bar.”
Seating woes were the latest frustration for the first Super Bowl at Jerry Jones’ $1.2 billion showplace.
A rare, severe winter storm moved into the area Tuesday, ripping holes in tents on the property and hampering travel and celebrations across the region. On Friday, six people at the stadium were injured by melting snow falling from the roof .
Organizers were hoping flawless game-day logistics would wipe out some of the complaints, but the seating problem could be an issue in the area’s plans to bid for the 50th Super Bowl in 2016.
About 15,000 temporary seats were added to the stadium in a bid to set the record for the largest crowd in Super Bowl history. Jones was aiming for more than 105,000, including stadium workers and media, and fans who bought standing room tickets for plazas outside the stadium.
