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NFL Knew Well Before Game That Some Super Bowl Seats Couldn't Be Used

Some of the temporary seats that couldn't be used at the Super Bowl.
Tom Pennington
/
Getty Images
Some of the temporary seats that couldn't be used at the Super Bowl.

"The National Football League knew of a potential Super Bowl XLV seating fiasco by the middle of last week," The Dallas Morning Newsreports.

League executives, the newspaper writes, said this morning that they didn't alert some ticket-holders that their seats might not be usable because they thought they had "a very good shot" at fixing the problems before the big game in Cowboys Stadium.

As the Newssays, "about 1,250 ticket holders were relocated or forced to watch Sunday's game on television monitors because the final installation of railings, stairs and risers was not completed on six sections of temporary seats." Of those fans, about 850 sat in different locations in the stadium. The other 400 were sent to standing-room areas or elsewhere.

While the NFL has been saying that fire and police officials ruled that the seats weren't safe, according to the News, "Arlington [Texas] police spokeswoman Tiara Richard said the city's fire marshal 'payed no role' in deciding that the unfinished seats would not be used because the NFL never asked the city to inspect those seats."

USA TODAY's The Huddle blog says the NFL is going to "refund three times the face value of the ticket, or $2,400, to the [400] non-seated fans" and has invited them to be guests at next year's Super Bowl.

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Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.