Will Buffalo Bills personal seat licenses retain their value?

Purchasing a PSL will give supporters the right to hold a season ticket for at least the duration of the 30-year lease at the new Orchard Park stadium, but buyers will eventually be able to sell the licenses.

The question is: for how much?

Having the ability to sell a PSL means season ticket holders will have some options.

Some fans will purchase PSLs with the intention of seeing their favorite team for as long as possible and either staying there for 30 years or passing them down to family or friends. They will justify the cost by spreading it over all the years of use.

But other season ticket holders may see it as a quasi-investment – ​​or at least a chance to recoup some or all of the initial cost later.

In Buffalo, with high demand for season tickets – there is a waiting list of several thousand people – and a weaker supply of PSL in a smaller capacity stadium of around 60,000 seats, some fans believe that PSLs could even sell on secondary markets at a higher price. profit.

The value of PSLs will likely depend on when they are sold: how long the PSL has remaining life – not all PSLs play by the same rules – and how well the team is performing at that time or what its future ?

It also depends on the market and the number of potential buyers. There is an unanswered question in Buffalo, as PSLs are new to this market. As the second smallest market in the NFL ahead of Green Bay, is Buffalo big enough to attract interest in the resale market, once all the hype about moving into a new stadium has died down? dried up?

While PSLs for premium seats can have a much more severe impact on the wallet, experts believe that these seat licenses can better retain their value. But the price of PSLs in these seats keeps getting more expensive, with team owners increasing these costs, especially in recent years.

“If the Bills could have a Super Bowl a year or two after playing in the new stadium, I think that would be a good time for those looking to sell,” said Charles Lindsey, a marketing professor at the University of Washington. Buffalo. “If you still have most of the lifespan of the PSL remaining and have just had successful seasons, you may be able to recoup its face value or sell it for a profit, and in essence, you would have used for free.

As soon as a vehicle is purchased and driven off the lot, it loses thousands of dollars in value. But this should not be the case for PSLs.

“PSLs will gradually lose value as you get closer to their expiration date, but you won’t get the same immediate depreciation,” said Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College in Massachusetts. .

Yet, as the years pass and a team begins to decline in play or goes through a rebuilding period, PSL values ​​could take a hit. For the Bills, that could plausibly happen when, say, star quarterback Josh Allen is ready to retire.

“The closer you get to the end of 30 years or so the product is not doing as well, those values ​​will probably drop quite significantly,” Lindsey said. “It will be interesting to see the secondary market and how it changes each year, especially in a unique market like Buffalo.”

Taking the 20 or so NFL teams that have launched PSLs in their stadiums as an example, fans will at least have no problem having the option to eventually purchase a seat license, even if they decide not to buy it or are not able to buy it beforehand. an opening of a new or renovated stadium.

PSL Source, an independent PSL resale broker, offers seat licenses on its website for 18 NFL teams, including the Los Angeles Rams and Las Vegas Raiders, the latest teams to require them for their stadiums. both opened in 2020.

Fans also sell their PSLs through STR Marketplace – a platform offering resale to 17 NFL teams, team-run marketplaces and platforms like eBay and Craigslist.

But on some sites, the available stock is significantly lower. For example, on PSL Source, there are only 31 listings for the Seattle Seahawks, who sold PSLs to only 12% of the 67,000-seat stadium – the smallest percentage of any team in the NFL with a PSL program. And, in Chicago, there are only 71 registrations for the Bears’ PSL.

Meanwhile, on the other side, the Raiders have 443 listings, the Dallas Cowboys have 413 and the Baltimore Ravens have 404, according to Charlotte-based PSL Source, which has been in the industry for over a decade .

There is no fee to list on PSL Source but sellers pay a 10% commission if their places sell. The teams also get in on the action. For example, the Ravens offer a team-run PSL Marketplace, which takes a 10% commission from the seller. Most teams allow private sales and transfers, but charge a fee to submit documents online.

The immediate availability of PSLs hasn’t stopped some fans from trying to profit from their sale.

The Raiders sold PSLs for 55,000 of the 65,000 seats at Allegiant Stadium, priced from $500 to $75,000. On PSL Source, PSLs are now available for between $10,400 and $300,000 per seat, a significant overall increase in cost compared to the team’s original pricing.

The same goes for the Rams, who share SoFi Stadium with the Chargers and have sold PSLs for between $1,000 and $100,000. On PSL Source, they are currently available for between $1,700 and $499,750 per seat.

Both teams raised around $600 million from the PSLs, which was directly spent on the construction of the stadium. Marketing experts have guessed that the Bills, who have said their PSL prices will be among the most reasonable in the league, could reap about $400 million from the PSL sale for their $1.7 billion stadium.

Fans selling PSLs in Los Angeles and Las Vegas enjoy a few perks. PSL life is still fairly new and the stadiums the teams are building are two of the most modern and expensive in the NFL, providing additional value to potential PSL buyers.

A UB law student who researched PSLs for his 2022 report “PSL: The Ultimate Futures Bet on Your Hometown Team?” noted that some Cleveland Browns fans in the Club Prime Section 300 level were asking a price 600% higher than what the team initially charged for the same PSL in the late 1990s when the team first launched PSL sales.

In Pittsburgh, where tickets can be difficult to acquire, a Steelers fan sold four PSLs that originally cost $4,800 when the stadium opened in 2001, a decade later for $100,000, a profit of $95,200, according to a Forbes report.

In comparison, at MetLife Stadium, which opened in 2010, the New York Giants sold approximately 70,000 PSLs with prices ranging from $1,000 on the upper deck to the most expensive PSL, in the club areas, at $20,000. Now, PSL prices in the secondary market are between $250 and $50,000 per seat. Although PSL values ​​have fallen at the low end, they are up for the best seats in the stadium.

Forbes reported that several years after the Jets, MetLife Stadium’s other tenant, and the Dallas Cowboys at AT&T Stadium demanded PSLs, fans were experiencing buyers’ remorse. Jets PSL holders who sold their rights lost an average of $3,233 per seat, while Cowboys fans took in an average of $2,390.

According to experts who project resale value, PSLs for loft seats are considered the worst buys, while heavy PSLs for better seats have a better chance of being profitable. However, it is much more economically feasible for most average fans to shell out a few thousand dollars for a PSL than to spend tens of thousands of dollars.

Despite the initial sticker shock and the reluctance encountered in some cities when PSLs were rolled out, most teams ultimately didn’t have much trouble selling them. Buffalo should follow suit, especially if the team continues to put out a winning product on the field, Lindsey said.

Additionally, more reasonably priced PSLs for the Bills have yet to be discussed with fans, and that could take months. Lindsey predicts many of these seats will cost between $1,000 and $5,000. Currently, the bills have only introduced prices for club seats ranging from $15,000 to $50,000 each for a PSL.

That’s partly because of a generational pull season ticket holders will feel, with seats reserved for certain families for decades, said John Cimperman, a longtime sports marketing professional.

“They feel like they don’t want to let down their grandfather or their great-grandfather,” he said.

There is also the fear of missing out. For Bills fans, they’re hesitant to give up their tickets because this will be the year the team finally returns to the Super Bowl, he said.

Cimperman has led focus groups of season ticket holders for the NHL’s Buffalo Sabers and other professional sports teams, and many fans said it was worth sacrificing another form of recreation for keep their tickets.

“The fans say they do it because they experience it year after year,” he said.