Jerry Jones on Visiting Fans: 'We're The Hottest Ticket There Is'

DALLAS (105.3 THE FAN) --  Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is no longer denying that opposing fans are filling up AT&T Stadium. Instead, he's on to explaining why.

Jones was out to set the record straight with Shan & RJ on Tuesday, just two days after Tony Romo characterized the team's win over Houston as a "road game".

Romo Calls Out Fans, Says Cowboys Were Road Team

The Cowboys owner began by explaining that many Cowboys season ticket holders don't live in the immediate Dallas-Fort Worth area, which limits their attendance at home games.

"They don't make every game. As a matter of fact, our surveys show with our ticket holders that we have a large percentage of them -- a third -- that only make four or five games a year," said Jones. "You put that with the fact that we're the hottest ticket there is on the [secondary market]. You have fans out there that are fishing, testing the market."

Jones says that tickets to Sunday's Cowboys-Texans game fetched up to 300 percent of face value on the secondary market. Standing room party passes, which retail for $29, were sold for as much as $100.

He doesn't blame fans who choose to sell their tickets for profit and recoup much of their investment.

"In doing so, they really do reduce their overall cost of coming to the stadium considerably," said Jones.

Jones says the stadium was designed to attract people from all over the country, much like Madison Square Garden in New York City. The difference is, Arlington is much more centrally located, making it convenient for traveling fans.

"We built this stadium so that it would be so visible and so well known across the United States. You can get to this stadium in two and a half, three hours from any place in the United States, much less drive. That's the story."

Jones also refuted the idea that the majority of AT&T Stadium's costly season tickets are held by ticket brokers and large corporations.

"We have less brokers probably than anybody in the United States with our tickets. We have corporately, a small percentage of our tickets are held by big corporations. You wouldn't see those tickets in the market. They either use them or they don't."

And while Jones admits that those tickets can fall into the hands of opposing fans, that makes up just a small portion of the fan base at Cowboys home games.

Jones joked that Romo and the offense got plenty of practice using a silent count on Sunday, a protocol which will be necessary as Dallas travels to Seattle this weekend.

And when the team takes care of business at home, the crowd noise is no longer a factor, regardless of who is sitting in the seats.

"I know this. They got quiet when we were up 10 points in the fourth quarter."

(©2014 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

Latest News:

Top Trending:

In:
• Jerry Jones