There is evidence that the Philadelphia Eagles are full steam ahead in efforts to break ground on a new stadium that would replace Lincoln Financial Field, with a target date of 2032.
In May, the team sent invitations to a small number of season ticket holders, seemingly targeted to those with seats in the lower bowl of Lincoln Financial Field, inviting them to participate in a focus group to provide feedback on the “stadium experience.” A screenshot of the email is below, redacted for the purpose of giving anonymity to the sender:
Attendees were encouraged to keep conversations from the focus group confidential, but were not required to sign any sort of non-disclosure agreement for the right to participate. PhillyVoice reached out to an Eagles spokesperson for comment about the May focus group, but did not receive a response.
Lincoln Financial Field is mentioned in the first line of the email shown above, but if you read it closely, the feedback the Eagles were seeking wasn’t necessarily about the Linc. When the select, small group of season ticket holders arrived for the focus group, the feedback that was solicited was about "the new stadium" — not "a potential new stadium" — and not at all about Lincoln Financial Field, an attendee of the focus group told PhillyVoice.
"I was quite attentive," the attendee said of the May focus group. "I was sitting there at the front where the guy was doing his presentation. Emphatically, he said, '2032, our lease runs out. Our intent is to build a new stadium.' There wasn't a God dang word about renovation. We spent zero time discussing what they could do better at the Linc. Zero. There was not a single question about it."
In an email that went out to a far wider audience on Thursday, season ticket holders were encouraged to participate in a pair of online surveys. One was about renovating Lincoln Financial Field, the other was about a potential new stadium. That is shown here, via our source who attended the focus group in May, and who also participated in the survey sent out on Thursday. That email looked like this:
"The simple fact that they did a separate renovation survey absolutely goes against what they said in the focus groups," the attendee said. "In the focus groups, the messaging was, '2032, we're doing this.' They didn't ask a single question about the Linc. They asked stuff like, 'Do you do tailgating at the current stadium?' But that was it. They didn't ask anything about how to fix up the Linc or make it better."
The attendee got into some details about tailgating at "the new stadium," and what type of stadium it would be (outdoor, dome, etc.), and the cost of personal seat licenses.
Tailgating
"In the focus groups, there was quite a bit of talk about tailgate zones at a new stadium," the attendee said. "They showed us like six cities. 'Here's what Green Bay does, here's what Atlanta does.' They were going through cities and asking, 'Hey what do you think about these?' They did not ask anything about that stuff in the survey (on Thursday). They were more generic in the survey, like, 'Do you tailgate? How do you get to the stadium? Mass transit? Personal vehicle?' And that was about it. They were really not asking those questions in the survey.
"Of the 10 people in my group, I'd say eight of us said that we are tailgaters. 'I go down early, I go with certain people, I cook my own food, blah blah blah.' And we told them about the cost. People tailgate in part because it's cheaper. It's so much cheaper than going in and spending all your money on beer and soda and food.
"They didn't commit to anything, but they said they were considering options for parking and tailgating, and they were like, 'What do you think about us providing a place where all you have to do is park your car, or get down there, and then you just join in this big outdoor tailgate?' That's the kind of way they framed it, and most people were just like, 'I'm not interested in that... we go down, we park, we tailgate on our own and we're happy doing it that way."
Will it be an indoor or outdoor stadium?
The attendee noted that the focus group presenter said that the city could pursue hosting major sporting events, like the Super Bowl and the NCAA Final Four, as well as other big non-sporting events. And, well, spoiler: Philly isn't going to be awarded a Super Bowl at an outdoor-only stadium, and the NCAA isn't going to be playing Final Four games outside in the cold and wind and rain.
The focus group attendee said that one of the other attendees asked if a translucent roof could be built on top of Lincoln Financial Field.
"The guy was like, 'No, we've already done research on that, and that's not going to work, we can't do it,'" the attendee said. "Technologically, it's an impossibility. They straight out said, 'We're building a new stadium.'"
Around the time Philadelphia was awarded Host City status for the FIFA World Cup in the summer of 2022, PhillyVoice followed up with an Eagles executive on a tip that the team was investigating the possibility of adding a translucent roof to cover Lincoln Financial Field. We were told that that wasn't going to happen.
Cost of personal seat licenses
At the focus group, the attendee was surprised that the presenters came prepared with specific costs for personal seat licenses for various sections of the stadium. The attendee said that the cost of a PSL in a congruent section of a new stadium as where their seats are currently in the Linc would be $37,000/seat. Most attendees expressed anger and sticker shock at the proposed prices. The attendee said that his seat license cost a mere $1,800 when the Linc opened in 2003.
In the survey that was sent out on Thursday, the attendee said that the projected cost for a PSL in a congruent section of the stadium had gone down drastically, from $37,000 per seat to $12,250 per seat.
The attendee said that in the Thursday survey, season ticket holders were asked to choose which combinations of seats and costs most appealed to them, five options at a time. The attendee sent PhillyVoice 55 (!) different screenshots of proposed pricing for different parts of the stadium, ranging in price from $1,500/seat to over $140,000 per seat. You can view a sampling of four of those below:
Where would it be?
The attendee said that the focus group didn't touch on the location of the stadium. An example of a question that came close to being within that realm was something along the lines of, "How far would you drive to see an Eagles game?"
Personally speaking, it's really hard to imagine a new football stadium being anywhere other than where the sports complex already resides in South Philly.
UPDATE: The Eagles noted that there were two focus groups in May. One was tailored toward a new stadium, the other was for renovations. (Of course, this doesn't change that the attendee's experience was that his focus group's presenter was adamant that a new stadium is happening.
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