Sports Biz

AP NY Jets

This morning on "The Call," Melissa Francis and I interviewed New York Jets owner Woody Johnson. Here are the highlights from our conversation.

Darren: You planned to auction a little bit more than 2,000 of those (Coaches Club) seats and you auctioned off less than half of them. What do you owe that to? Is that the economic times or the fact that you might have tried to auction off to many in a smaller time period?

Johnson: Well, I think part of it was. First of all, 2,000 was the absolute limit of the Coaches Club. This is a first time event really with StubHub and auctioning off this kind of product. So 620 (PSL's) over a nine-day period, we consider a major success. It was. We set and validated the fact that in the public market, the PSL has value, has a lot of value and people are happy with it.

Darren: About half of the NFL teams have done these personal seat licenses. Fans have a chance to purchase the seats or will purchase the seats once they buy these PSL's. In every market, the fans get very upset that they are being asked to do this. That their loyalty is being uprooted by financial demands. What do you say to that long time season ticket holder who can't afford the Coaches Club or even something like the $5,000 PSL and now has to move the upper deck?

Johnson: One of the things we've tried to do is tried to end the pricing of the building. We've tried to have a price and location and come up with a product for virtually everybody. We've left, as you may aware, a third of the building—27,000 seats—without PSL's. And you know, I think in doing that and offering an array of different seats at different price points with different clubs and different amenities, I think hopefully everybody will feel that there's something for them in the building.

Melissa: In the offseason, you picked up Brett Favre. So far this year, he has 15 touchdowns and 11 interceptions, but he has the best selling jersey in the league and of course, he's taken focus off the Giants. Has it been worth the $12 million?

Johnson: He's been just an amazing addition. We've made a number of acquisitions during the offseason this year. He was very important. He's playing like Brett Favre. I mean, we're third in the league in scoring or second in the league in scoring right now. His teammates like him. He's been elected captain and so we're very happy to have Brett.

Melissa: How do you feel about the price you paid at this point. Would you say $12 million is worth it? Did you get a deal?

Johnson: Well, we're very happy to have Brett here. Nothing in football is cheap so, you know, when the season progresses, we'll decide. I mean, I'm happy with it at this point. I think we made a very strategic acquisition. We did it for the right reasons. We tried to make our football team better as we do every year and along with the other players, including Alan Faneca and (Damien) Woody, you know on the offensive side, I think we've really improved our team.

Darren: Take me to the end of the season. You're 4-3 right now. Is there more pressure to make the playoffs this year than any other year because you're selling those seats to the new stadium?

Johnson: We always approach the season a game at the time and I wouldn't say there is more pressure. There's always ultimate pressure. We're trying to do as well as we can every week and try to win every game. We don't go in thinking we're going to lose any games. We try to win every game. So we're not kind of linking those two things.

Darren: What about naming rights? I know you guys are trying to sell naming rights. There was buzz for a while around Allianz. That disappeared, but by what factor do you expect the numbers to be compromised at all in terms of how much you can get for the stadium naming rights for a new stadium?

Johnson: I don't think they are going to be compromised at all because the naming right sponsor ultimately will be a large company that takes a look at the New York market and the fact that there's two NFL teams (playing in this stadium), the most popular sporting kind of events you have now. We'll have an event every week during the whole season...and we feel that this is a unique opportunity and these kind of global companies that would be interested in this will continue to have interest.

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