BY LUCY MAY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
As demolition continues and construction progresses on the Bengals' riverfront football complex, the team is already scoring big with sales of premium seats in the new stadium.
The team has sold 85 of its 112 luxury suites, which can seat as many as 20 people and range in price from $45,000 to $134,000 a year. For most fans, the suites are priced out of reach. But the opening of Paul Brown Stadium in August 2000 will bring to town a new way to watch professional football that's fancier than general admission seating but cheaper than suites: club seats.
Although club seats, which range from $995 to $1,995 each per year, are new here, the team has had no trouble selling them. Of the 7,600 club seats available, 6,100 have been sold.
Club seats, in fact, are the only 50-yard-line seats left in the stadium, said Jeff Berding, the team's director of community affairs. And he doesn't expect them to last long.
"In our mind, there's no question that in August 2000, businesses and people in this community are going to have seats in Paul Brown Stadium," Mr. Berding said. "The question is, where are you going to be?"
The club seats are being marketed to fans willing to spend more for the wider seats, in-seat service and access to swanky club lounges with views of downtown and the river.
They're also popular among executives and small and mid-sized businesses who want a nice place to entertain clients but can't afford big-ticket suites, Mr. Berding said.
That marketing strategy is typical nationwide, said Max Muhleman, president and CEO of Muhleman Marketing Inc., a sports marketing firm based in Charlotte, N.C.
"It's a seat that kind of crosses over between businesses and individual fans," he said. "It offers many of the suitelike amenities, but you can lease them one seat at a time."
Bengals marketing officials are just beginning a new push to sell club seats complete with drawings of what it will be like to watch a game from the seats and what the interior of the club lounge will look like.
Fans who buy club seats have access to the lounge year-round, and the team expects to have the facilities used all year for everything from wedding receptions to business meetings, Mr. Berding said. Club seats are an innovation in football stadiums, baseball parks and basketball arenas built in the past 10 years, Mr. Muhleman said, and they typically sell well nationwide.
"I really don't know of anywhere that hasn't sold out their club seats fairly quickly," he said.
Luxury suites and club seats are two of the big reasons football and baseball teams want new facilities these days because they generate more money for the teams than general admission seating can.
For example, just 5,000 club seats at $125 per football game generates $625,000 per game, Mr. Muhleman said. A team would have to sell nearly 17,000 general admission seats at $37 per seat to generate that kind of money, he said.
For that reason, getting a good number of luxury suites and club seats in the new stadium was a crucial part of the Bengals' negotiations with Hamilton County, said Stuart Dornette, the team's lead negotiator. The team's tentative stadium deal with the county, in fact, hinged on being able to sell a certain number of club seats and suites by a certain date.
"If we couldn't market those suites and club seats in this community, then it made no sense for the community to put the money into a new stadium," Mr. Dornette said.
Getting that extra revenue translates into being able to pay players more and fielding a better team, he said.
Bengals officials like to say there will be no bad seats in the new stadium, but the best general admission seats already have been sold through Hamilton County's charter ownership agreement, or seat license, campaign, said Don Schumacher, coordinator of the campaign for the county.
The First Fans sales campaign has sold about 35,000 seat licenses, or COAs, for the stadium, and has about 17,000 seats left to sell, he said.
The remaining seats are in the upper seating area from the 25-yard-line to the goal line and around both end zones, Mr. Schumacher said. The fees from those COAs -- which average $500 -- and $150 COA fees that people buy with club seats total $26.2 million to be used toward construction of the $404 million football complex.
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