Browns PSL rules ban resale for profit

NewsThe Cleveland Browns announced the opening of the Browns Experience, a $1 million facility designed to give prospective ticket buyers a look inside the team’s $2.6 billion indoor stadium being built nearby in Brook Park. Season ticket holders and prospective buyers can tour the team’s new Browns Experience at its Berea headquarters, beginning with a look at the team’s history and memorabilia. The experience culminates in an Advent designed projection room that is immersive giving fans a look at the view from any seat or suite of their choice inside the new Browns stadium before its scheduled completion in three years. john kuntz, cleveland.comBy Today in Ohiocleveland.comPay thousands of dollars for the right to buy Browns season tickets, keep buying those tickets every year to preserve that right — and if the license becomes more valuable, don’t assume you can profit from selling it.That combination of rules left Today in Ohio podcast hosts wondering Friday just how much control a buyer really gets from purchasing a personal seat license at the Browns’ planned new stadium in Brook Park.“I’m never going to wrap my head around the idea that you pay for a license to buy tickets to something,” host Chris Quinn said. It’s a fact of life in the NFL, said Lisa Garvin, who walked through the rules approved by the Brook Park New Community Authority for personal seat licenses, or PSLs. The license would last 30 years, she said, unless the holder failed to renew season tickets. Buyers would have to purchase their season tickets by an annual deadline to keep the PSL.There would also be a $100-per-seat fee to transfer a PSL to someone outside the family, Garvin said.But the restriction that caught Quinn’s attention was the provision that buyers do not have the right to transfer their PSLs for a profit. That struck him as especially strange because one of the original ideas behind buying Browns PSLs in the 1990s, he said, was that they might someday rise in value.Quinn recalled thinking that if the Browns eventually became successful, the license might become something worth selling.“It never happened,” he said. “They’ve lost value.”The old licenses may not have delivered the investment value some buyers imagined, but Quinn said that does not make the new restriction any easier to understand.“The idea that, that if they increased in value, you’re deprived of the ability to get that,” he said. “I am not even sure how that should be legal.”His point was a question about ownership. If a fan pays for the license, Quinn said, why should the seller continue controlling what the buyer can receive for it later?“They’re trying to block that. I’m not quite following how they can get away with that.”Garvin had another complaint. She said prices for the Browns’ new PSLs have not yet been announced, but pointed to Buffalo, where licenses at the Bills’ new stadium ranged from $750 to $50,000. If Browns licenses reach five figures in some sections, Garvin said, she would expect at least one major perk that the rules do not guarantee.“If they’re talking five figures for some of these PSLs, I want a guarantee for a Super bowl seat,” she said.There is no such guarantee.That sent Quinn back to the broader absurdity he sees in the PSL system. In most transactions, a customer pays for the product or service itself. Here, the customer pays first for the right to make another purchase — and can lose that right by failing to keep making the second purchase.“What other industry does this,” Quinn asked. “I’m paying you for the ability to buy tickets from you.”Current Browns PSL holders will receive credit toward new licenses in Brook Park, Garvin said. She noted that the original licenses sold in 1996 for roughly $250 to $1,500, while the prices at other new NFL stadiums suggest the next round could be far more expensive.Listen to the conversation here.Employers gain experienced workers. Seniors lose the happy retirement they plannedFederal crackdown made hundreds of arrests. So why make the numbers look bigger?Frank LaRose warned Ohioans about voter-registration mail. Why not help make it work? Listen to full “Today in Ohio” episodes where Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour news podcast, with Editorial Board member Lisa Garvin, Impact Editor Leila Atassi and Content Director Laura Johnston.