KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Ever since Tom Lyons moved to the Kansas City metro more than 30 years ago, he’s been a Kansas City Chiefs’ fanatic. He’s stuck with them through their highs and lows.
“I was vested with the Chiefs,” Lyons said.
That was until this month, when he got the bad news.
“The only way I found out, I happened to call them to buy more tickets. (They said) You can’t buy more. You can’t even have yours,” he recalled.
This 20-year season ticket holder was suddenly ticketless. He was told that the suite he shared with another company on the 50-yard line and paid $41,000 for last year, had been sold four weeks earlier when the Chiefs were undefeated at 9-0.
“Everyone in that suite got booted and everyone in the suite next to us got booted,” Lyons said.
Lyons, the owner and CEO of a national travel agency, said he would have gladly tried to match any price offered for the suite if the Chiefs had just given him the opportunity. It’s an opportunity he believes he deserves after decades as a loyal fan.
“It’s easy to sell a suite when your team is 9-0, but what about when you are 2-14?” Lyons asked.
But he said the Chiefs’ sales office wouldn’t budge and instead offered him six bar stools in a different suite, higher up in the stadium and on the end zone.
“From a suite with leather seats to that?” Lyons said.
The Kansas City Chiefs’ ticket contract states that a Chiefs ticket is a renewable, but revocable license and it can be taken away at any time for nearly any reason. A spokesman for the Chiefs told FOX 4 Problem Solvers that suites are treated differently than regular season tickets. Once a suite contract is nearing an end, as it was in the case of Mr. Lyons’ suite, the suite is placed back on the open market.
The Chiefs wouldn’t say who the suite was sold to, except that it was a “longtime Chiefs fan.” While what happened to Mr. Lyons may be perfectly legal, Lyons said it’s tough staying loyal to a team that has shown no loyalty to him.
“If they can’t do anything for me, I’m looking for another NFL team, ” Lyons said. “They don’t even have to be good.”
The Chiefs tell Problem Solvers that it is still trying to find a way to win back Mr. Lyons’ support.
