The Falcons this year have sold more new season tickets and have had fewer defaults on personal seat licenses than in any of the previous three years, according to a team official.
Don Rovak, vice president of sales and service for Falcons parent company AMB Sports & Entertainment, said this week that the Falcons have sold about 5,000 new season tickets/seat licenses this year.
On the other hand, he said, the PSL default rate has dropped to “a shade over 4%” this year, or about 2,300 defaults out of 55,000 PSLs. That’s an improvement from an annual default rate of 8% or 9% in the past few years, he said. PSLs are one-time fees required for the right to buy season tickets; defaults occur when PSL holders walk away from their seats.
The Falcons’ season ticket/seat license sales “were going in the wrong direction” in recent years, Rovak acknowledged, meaning the number of defaults -- or cancellations -- exceeded the number of new sales. “This year, we have flipped that upside down … and doubled in new sales the amount of people we lost,” he said.
Rovak attributed the improvement – despite three consecutive losing seasons -- to a range of factors, including a series of new benefits the Falcons rolled out in March to personal seat license holders.
Those benefits include: a ticket-swap program that allows most PSL holders to exchange their tickets to some games for additional tickets to other games; a ticket sell-back program that allows certain PSL holders to redeem tickets to 2021 games that they can’t attend for credit toward 2022 season tickets; free team-branded merchandise; and complimentary tickets to road games for some club-seat account holders.
“We launched a lot of new programs that we felt were right on par with what (fans) had been asking for, and it’s been a really productive last four to five months from every metric,” Rovak said. “These (benefits) have all helped bring people back, helped sell new season tickets and helped people stay on board that might have considered leaving us after some pretty bad football seasons.”
A 4% default rate on PSLs translates to a renewal rate of 96% on season tickets. “Ninety-six percent retention for us is living in a really healthy place,” Rovak said.
It also signals a widespread willingness by fans to return to a full-capacity Mercedes-Benz Stadium after attendance was severely limited last season because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Rovak said ticket sales also are strong for an open practice the Falcons plan to hold in the stadium Aug. 7. Those tickets cost $5 each.
Personal seat licenses, often paid in installments over multiple years, convey the right to buy season tickets in a particular seat for as long as the team plays in the stadium. When defaults occur, fans forfeit whatever money has been paid on their PSLs previously. The team then can re-sell the seats. Falcons PSLs originally went on sale in January 2016 and ranged in price from $500 to $45,000.
As of last year, PSL defaults had totaled $42.9 million since 2016, according to figures provided by the Falcons to a state agency. That represented the remaining amount that was owed when PSL holders walked away from seats.
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