EAST RUTHERFORD — The New Jersey Sports & Exposition Authority spent almost $1 million to lock up season tickets for the New York Giants and Jets, seats that will be used by VIPs including elected officials. The state agency secured 142 season passes in the National Football League teams’ new $1.6 billion stadium in East Rutherford by paying an...
New Meadowlands Stadium in East Rutherford.
EAST RUTHERFORD — The New Jersey Sports & Exposition Authority spent almost $1 million to lock up season tickets for the New York Giants and Jets, seats that will be used by VIPs including elected officials.
The state agency secured 142 season passes in the National Football League teams’ new $1.6 billion stadium in East Rutherford by paying an $854,000 one-time license fee and $221,600 for actual tickets to 20 games set for 2010. The agency also paid $275,000 for a luxury suite. The costs were provided in response to a public records request by Bloomberg News.
Business partners, politicians and others associated with the agency will be able to buy the tickets from the authority, which plans a service fee to recoup costs, said John Samerjan, a spokesman. The agency, which neither owns nor manages the new stadium and is supposed to operate without taxpayer help, is asking lawmakers for $32.8 million to make up a funding shortfall at a time when state social services are being cut.
Dennis Robinson, the authority’s president, said the purchases were made so the agency could keep tickets it controlled in the old stadium.
“In 2008 the Authority was forced to make a decision — either give up your seats forever potentially, or continue to purchase a reasonable amount of seats for business purposes,” he said. “The decision had to be made on the spot.”
The authority reserves the seats for use by sponsors of its other facilities, high-stakes horse bettors and people who are valuable to its business, Robinson said.
Revenue from nearby Izod Center and other facilities the authority manages paid for the seats, not taxpayers, Samerjan said. The agency will receive a management fee of about $700,000 from the new stadium, as well as reimbursement for staffing ticket sales, security and other services there, Robinson said.
The sports authority was set up in 1971 to build and run the state-owned Meadowlands Sports Complex, including Giants Stadium, and operates racetracks in the state. It is governed by a 16-person commission. All but three members are appointed to four-year terms by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate, according to the agency’s website.
The authority expects to plug its funding shortfall, the result of closing the old stadium and less money from horse racing, with tax revenue from the new facility. The Legislature must approve the funds.
At the old Giants stadium, which was owned by the authority, season tickets helped bring in “millions of dollars of business from corporate partners and promoters who want access to events,” Samerjan said, citing concession contracts. The New Meadowlands Stadium was chosen this week to host the 2014 Super Bowl.
The authority has generated $650 million in tax revenue for the state over the years, he said.
“It has been part of our doing business with the Giants and Jets for decades,” Samerjan said, noting separately the agency doesn’t have records of how tickets were used in the past. The seat licenses can be sold after March 2011 if the agency chooses to give up the tickets, he said.
Gov. Chris Christie, 47, criticized the season- ticket purchases in a statement issued by his spokesman, Michael Drewniak, calling it another “astonishingly bad decision that we will now have to fix.”
Christie’s office began reviewing the authority’s ticket practices after Bloomberg News reported in April that elected state officials received preferred access to concerts, including shows by Bruce Springsteen and U2, at state-run venues.
The authority plans to use the game tickets in much the same way, offering them to commissioners, suppliers, politicians and their constituents, Samerjan said. The seat licenses and tickets will be part of a wider Meadowlands examination by the governor that is expected to be done by June 30.
For the 2010-2011 football season, the authority bought some of the best seats in the 82,000-seat stadium. Four Jets seats are in the “Great Hall Club” which carry a $25,000 license fee and are behind the visiting team’s bench, according to the team’s website.
The authority purchased 80 Jets seats in all, spending $524,000 on licenses and $131,600 on tickets for this year’s 10 home games. They include 20 end-zone seats and 18 in a goal-line section on the Jets side of the field.
The 62 Giants seats cost $90,000 for tickets and $330,000 for seat licenses. Four of the Giants tickets run $400 per game each and include access to a special Mezzanine Club for refreshments and shelter.
“It’s a continuation of a relationship that’s existed for 35 years,” said Pat Hanlon, a spokesman for the Giants.
The Giants and Jets imposed the seat license fees, a one-time charge to season-ticket holders, to raise about $360 million of the cost of the privately funded stadium.
“It’s seen as price gouging,” said Joris Drayer, a professor at the University of Memphis who studies ticketing. Season ticket holders are “your most rabid fans and you’re taking advantage of that affinity.”
Of the 55,000 Jets licenses, 17,000 remained unsold, the New York Post reported this month, citing unidentified sources. The unsold tickets include seats in the “Great Hall Club,” said Bruce Speight, a Jets spokesman, who declined to confirm the report. The Giants have fewer than 1,500 licenses remaining, said Hanlon.
In addition to the tickets, the sports authority also has three luxury suites in the new stadium. Two are a result of the contract with the teams and the agency spent $275,000 to secure a third, according to the records.
State Senator Richard Codey, who negotiated the new stadium deal with the Giants and Jets as governor in 2005, said the question of exempting the authority from seat license fees didn’t come up while the deal was being struck.
Agency expenditures need greater scrutiny, given the request for funds and the state budget deficit, said Carl Van Horn, a Rutgers University professor and member of the governor’s economic advisory council.
“If the state is subsidizing this, are we actually getting a return on our investment or not?” said Van Horn, who oversaw the authority as state policy director. “The argument is always, ‘We’re different and we need to do these things to be successful,’ but if you’re not successful then you’re accountable to the Legislature and governor.”
By Dunstan McNichol and Adam Satariano/Bloomberg News
With assistance from Aaron Kuriloff in New York and Terrence Dopp in Trenton.