NFL History | Cowboys Stadium, Arlington — Fifteen Thousand Temporary Seats and the Ones That Could Not Be Used

On Sunday 6 February 2011 the Green Bay Packers beat the Pittsburgh Steelers 31-25 in Super Bowl XLV at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas. Pro-Football-Reference's box score gives the quarters as Green Bay 14, 7, 0, 10 and Pittsburgh 0, 10, 7, 8, and the crowd as 103,219.

That number is the reason this entry exists.

## The number, and the number beside it

NFL.com reported after the game that the announced crowd of 103,219 fell short both of a target of 105,000 and of the 103,985 recorded at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena for the 1980 Super Bowl. Pro-Football-Reference's box score for that 1980 game, Pittsburgh 31, Los Angeles Rams 19 on 20 January, confirms the Rose Bowl as the site but carries no attendance figure, so the comparison here rests on NFL.com alone.

The same report says about 15,000 temporary seats were added to the stadium for the game. This entry does not assert why they were added; it records that the figure the crowd was measured against was published in the same paragraph as the shortfall. What the temporary work consisted of can be taken from NPR's account of what was unfinished: railings, stairs and risers.

## What did not get finished

NFL.com reported that six temporary sections went up too late to be put into use, that roughly 850 ticket holders were moved to seats the league described as similar or better, and that 400 more could not be given a seat with a view of the field. Sports Illustrated, reporting the 2015 trial, put the unusable capacity at about 1,250 seats and said the 400 were sent to standing-room areas.

The league offered the 400 three times the face value of their tickets, $2,400 on an $800 ticket, and NPR reported the same week that they were also invited as guests to the following year's game.

## Two accounts of one inspection

The reason the seats were not used is not settled, and the two published accounts do not sit together.

NFL.com's report attributed to a police officer, unnamed in the piece, the explanation that winter storms had set back the work and the seats went up so late that the fire marshal did not have time to inspect them. NPR, reporting on 7 February 2011, carried the opposite from Tiara Richard, a spokeswoman for the Arlington police: that the city's fire marshal played no role in the decision, because the NFL never asked the city to inspect those seats.

One account has a municipal inspection that could not be completed in time. The other has a municipal inspection that was never requested. Both are attributed to the Arlington police. Nothing consulted here reconciles them.

Scott Suprina, president of Seating Solutions, described by CBS News Texas as the contractor at the centre of the seating lawsuit, told the station KRLD that the seating problems came from winter weather, and denied that he had been coached or told to change his testimony.

## The courtroom

Ticket holders sued the league in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. NFL.com reported that Judge Barbara Lynn refused to certify a class, holding that variation in the materiality of the omissions, combined with individual questions of reliance and damages, predominated over the questions the claimants had in common. The proposed class covered three situations: people given no seat, people moved to a different seat, and people whose obstructed view was not disclosed on the ticket.

Seven plaintiffs went to trial instead. Sports Illustrated reported that on 12 March 2015 the jury found that the league had breached its contract with them but had not committed fraud, and awarded almost $76,000 in total: five of the seven had incomplete seats, two had obstructed views and had sued for fraudulent inducement.

The award was a lump sum for seven people. Neither report consulted here breaks it down per plaintiff, and this entry does not divide it.

## What failed here

The part of this building that could not be used on 6 February 2011 was the part that had been standing for a few weeks. Nothing in the sources consulted puts the permanent bowl in question; the sections withdrawn, the people moved, the refunds and the verdict all attach to seating erected for one afternoon and to whether anyone certified it.

The building has since been renamed; the caption on the 2025 photograph used here calls it AT&T Stadium.

## Coordinate

The pin is 32.750298, -97.089933, with a precision radius of 600 metres. That radius is unusually wide and the reason should be stated plainly.

Only one method was available to this entry. The United States Environmental Protection Agency's Facility Registry Service carries two separate registrations for the stadium's construction, one under Blue Star Development Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, registry ID 110033436235, and one under Manhattan Construction Cowboys Stadium, both at 1400 East Randol Mill Road, Arlington, Texas 76011. The United States Census Bureau's TIGER geocoder returns 32.750298, -97.089933 for that address, interpolated along a street address range of 1116 to 1498 on the right side of the road.

That is a point on East Randol Mill Road, not a point on the stadium. TIGER has no record of AT&T Way, Legends Way or the other addresses tried, and returned no match for any of them. A second TIGER query at 1100 East Randol Mill Road returns 32.749932, -97.092344, which places the road itself along a latitude near 32.7500 and confirms that the first result is a road point rather than a building point. The municipal site-address-point route that produced a building-placed coordinate in New Orleans has no counterpart reachable here: the City of Arlington publishes no Socrata portal, and the state portal at data.texas.gov holds no address-point layer. OpenStreetMap's geocoders and Wikidata were refused to this task's fetch tool rather than by the hosts themselves. The EPA registrations carry no coordinates.

The radius is therefore set to cover the stadium site around the street point rather than to describe the footprint, which this entry did not independently establish.

## Cover image

Soldiers throwing a football on the field at AT&T Stadium during the USAA Salute to Service Boot Camp, 19 August 2025. Photograph by Specialist Julian Winston, 1st Cavalry Division, VIRIN 250819-A-XN888-1006, DVIDS image 9267923, public domain.

It shows the permanent lower bowl with its section markers legible, which is the part of this building the sources consulted do not put in question. It is not a photograph of Super Bowl XLV, and none of the temporary seating described above is in it.

Second image: the same event, a soldier performing a broad jump on the field with the bowl, the goalpost and an end-zone star behind him, VIRIN 250819-A-XN888-2005, DVIDS image 9267892, same photographer and date, public domain. Its caption names the soldier as Private First Class Janzel Candelario of the 1st Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery Regiment.