Personal seat licenses, which could be part of the Broncos’ new stadium plan, risk replacing lifelong fans with seats held for resale rather than participation and tradition.
This doesn’t feel like progress. It feels like the quiet ending of something we built together.
The NFL is a business, stadiums age, and progress is part of the game. Broncos fans are not opposed to change. We struggled with the move from the original Mile High but learned to love the current stadium when it opened in 2001. We’ll do the same with the next one. We are asking for the opportunity to be part of it, not quietly priced out of it.
The fact that the team and ownership worked hard to keep the stadium in Denver matters. There were real opportunities to move the Broncos outside the city, to the suburbs. Choosing to keep the team in Denver proper demonstrates that the connection between this franchise and the city is understood. That choice deserves recognition, and the fans notice.
Many current season ticket holders, myself included, are not wealthy and we don’t treat these seats as investments. For me, Broncos football is my entertainment budget. I save all year so I can be there, every game, and I’ve missed five home games in more than three decades. The point is bigger than me. A lot of longtime holders plan around the season and renew because the seats mean something. For many of us, that added charge is something we simply can’t afford.
Broncos season tickets aren’t an impulse buy. They’re earned through years, sometimes decades, on the waiting list. Many fans start in the upper deck when their number finally comes up, then spend years moving through upgrade lists. The reward is renewal rights, the ability to buy the same seats next season. If you don’t renew, the rights revert to the Broncos and the next person on the list gets their chance.
A personal seat license, or PSL, is typically a one-time purchase required to hold the right to buy season tickets for a specific seat. For longtime season ticket holders, “one time” doesn’t mean small, it can be a five-figure gate that permanently changes who gets to stay in the building.
With a 100,000-plus person season ticket waiting list and a reported 99% renewal intent, the current season-ticket base is extremely stable. If PSLs become a requirement to keep seats, the effect isn’t a gentle reset. It’s pay or leave for the people who built the game-day environment.
We’ve seen how this plays out elsewhere. In Buffalo, a small-market team with a loyal fan base, reporting shows new-stadium PSL price points reaching into the tens of thousands for some seats. Las Vegas Raiders PSL prices have been reported ranging from $500 to $75,000 per seat depending on location.
The deeper issue is what a seat becomes. Today, season tickets are a renewal relationship. If seat licenses turn seats into transferable assets with resale value baked in, incentives shift toward investment behavior. Over time, that makes it harder to keep Broncos games anchored in Broncos fans. That is how you replace heart with dollars, fans with investors.
The Broncos have acted on this principle before, Ticketmaster restricted AFC Championship ticket sales to Rocky Mountain billing addresses to prioritize Broncos fans.
Stadium culture requires continuity. It depends on the same people showing up year after year, carrying traditions forward. When seats are dominated by one-game buyers, corporate allocations, and resale markets, that continuity breaks. You can fill every seat and still lose the atmosphere that makes Broncos home games matter.
One example is the “IN-COM-PLETE” chant. It wasn’t created by marketing, and it isn’t written into a script. It exists because the same fans have been in the same seats long enough for something spontaneous to become tradition.
Denver has always had a different environment for a football game, and people here loudly take pride in being part of the game. Broncos football sits alongside other unique Colorado anchors like the Stock Show and the Rocky Mountains, as part of the city’s identity. It’s a lived experience, passed down through generations.
The current Broncos ownership has a unique opportunity to reward the fan base who has made the game environment what it is today. If PSLs are part of the plan, they should not be a blunt instrument applied the same way to every season ticket holder. A better approach is tiered seat licensing that protects long-term, low-resale holders and places higher requirements on accounts that routinely treat seats as resale inventory.
Denver’s home-field advantage has never been about stadium architecture or luxury amenities. It has always been about people.
We’re not asking to stop progress. We’re asking not to be left behind by it.
We are not just fans of the Denver Broncos. We are the Denver Broncos.
Dave Burdick, of Denver, is a Colorado native and longtime Denver Broncos season ticket holder.
The Colorado Sun is a nonpartisan news organization, and the opinions of columnists and editorial writers do not reflect the opinions of the newsroom. Read our ethics policy for more on The Sun’s opinion policy. Learn how to submit a column. Reach the opinion editor at [email protected].
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