Cowboys Trying to Make It Almost Impossible to Buy Tickets

The decisions and deals that have turned around the Dallas Cowboys since Jerry Jones bought the team in 1989 are chronicled on sports pages every day.

Coach Tom Landry fired after 29 years. College coach Jimmy Johnson hired. Troy Aikman signed, later Emmitt Smith, Charles Haley and others. Herschel Walker traded.

But hustle off the field is helping Jones make a return on his $140-million investment.

While all attention now is on the team’s drive to the Super Bowl--the Cowboys will have a home playoff game on Jan. 10 for the first time since 1983--Jones has another very lucrative and elusive aim: filling 65,000-seat Texas Stadium with season ticketholders.

That would lift Dallas into the company of just two other teams, the New York Giants and Washington Redskins, for which tickets must practically be inherited.

Cowboys season ticket sales have climbed from 35,000 in 1989 to more than 50,000 this year. And the organization began selling next year’s packages, along with pricey options to hold the best seats, this fall as the team embarked on a franchise-record 13-victory season.

For Jones, a 50-year-old millionaire oilman from Arkansas who recounts his sales experience back to a watermelon stand as a child, the Cowboys are the ultimate pitch.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been a very good salesman about something I didn’t believe in or get excited about,” Jones said. “I have, from day one, been so excited about the future of the Dallas Cowboys that I imagine I have done the best in my lifetime as a salesman with the Cowboys.”

As in many enterprises, success in pro football begets success.

After going 11-5 in 1991, networks this year pushed Dallas into more late afternoon games, which get the most TV viewers.

The two most-watched games this season involved the Cowboys--the Monday night game at Philadelphia Oct. 5 and the Dec. 13 showdown in Washington. The second game had more viewers for CBS than any regular season game it had aired since 1986.

More Dallas players have been getting commercial endorsements this year and wide receiver Michael Irvin even has his own TV show. Personal appearance requests have climbed and so has interest in Texas Stadium as an event site, Jones said.

David Wintergrass, spokesman for NFL properties in New York, said Cowboys souvenir sales are second only to the Los Angeles Raiders nationally, up from eighth last year. Circulation is up for the team’s weekly newspaper and a just-started official fan club got 3,000 members before advertising started last week.

“When the coaches see everybody on this end of the building working hard and staying late and working long hours, they feed on it and say ‘Yeah we’re going to do our part,”’ said Jones’ son Stephen, a team vice president. “And everybody is working toward a common goal, which is not only to have a winning franchise but a real stable franchise and a successful franchise financially as well.’

Without mentioning specifics, the elder Jones said he’s making better than bank interest returns from the Cowboys, but not a huge profit that would be typically associated with such a large investment of time and money.

“I never expected and planned to make a lot of money with the Dallas Cowboys,” he said. “On the other hand, I did not expect to get my financial head handed to me. . . . I’m doing what I set out to do.”

More importantly for the team’s fans, Jones said he thinks he’s learned how to keep the Cowboys competitive, no matter what player compensation system, free agency or another, develops.

“I think any system that they come up with in the NFL, we will be able to compete,” Jones said. “I can see I can run this club in a way that keeps me optimistically wanting to do what it takes to win on the field.”

Part of that optimism stems from the success Jones had selling suites around Texas Stadium, which he obtained control of in the 1989 purchase, and lining up corporate sponsors. The best year for selling suites, $15 million worth of multiple-length contracts in 1989, was the worst for the team on the field, a 1-15 record.

“While I didn’t have any partners in my team ownership, they, in fact, were my partners,” Jones said of the sponsors and corporate suite buyers. “I said, ‘Get involved with me now and grow as we grow in terms of interest and people get more excited.”’

He created more sponsorship opportunities by moving the team’s training camp to Austin from Thousand Oaks, Calif., and even allowed companies to put a logo on the Texas Stadium floor during preseason games.

Although attendance had declined for five years and the team had three losing seasons before Jones bought it, he benefited from the reputation Landry, general manager Tex Schramm, and previous owners and players had built over 29 years.

His first step, amid a storm of criticism over Landry’s firing, was to ask Dallas fans for a chance.

“We were getting a lot of visibility, albeit a lot of criticism, but a lot of visibility,” Jones said. “Our plan was to as quickly as we could make that interest become active interest, get fans to the games, get companies involved in our suites, involved in our marketing.”

At the same time, the organization brought all its marketing in-house, from ticket and souvenir sales to TV production.

The Cowboys this year produce three weekly 30-minute TV shows--one featuring Jones, one with Johnson and one broadcast from the locker room right after games. The club also handled TV production of its preseason games and does a Super Bowl special regardless of whether the Cowboys play in it.

The team launched new group sales ticket promotions two years ago after hiring ticket director Joel Finglass from the Kansas City Chiefs, considered the most innovative marketer in the league for filling a large (77,600 seat) stadium in a relatively small market.

Jones knows the best way to reach his business goals is through continued success on the field, and he hopes to add another attraction for next year’s crowds: the 1993 Super Bowl championship trophy.