At a typical sports arena in America, a $10 bill might get you one beer. At Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the new $1.6 billion home of the Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta United MLS team, it can buy you two beers. Or five hot dogs. Or three hot dogs and an order of fries, plus $1 back.

The food prices are low—crazy low. Minor League Baseball low. They are the lowest food prices in US major league sports.

The stadium offers $2 hot dogs, $2 sodas (with unlimited free refills), $3 french fries, $3 popcorn, and $5 12-ounce light beers. The concessions are also in “whole dollar” prices, meaning no coins to worry about (those prices already include tax).

When football fans learned of the food prices back in May, they went nuts, and the news went viral. But fans may be surprised to learn that this NFL team’s food price idea came from… golf.

“Part of the inspiration came from The Masters,” says Mike Gomes, VP of fan experience for the stadium. “It’s one of the most exclusive places to go, and people who go don’t talk about the azaleas or the 16th hole, they talk about how low the food and beverage pricing is.” (The Masters, in Augusta, Ga., is known for its $1.50 pimento cheese sandwiches and $4 beers served in plastic souvenir cups.)

Yahoo Finance visited the stadium before the team’s final preseason game to get the full story on the surprising strategy.

View photos Fans order food at Mercedes-Benz Stadium before an Aug. 31, 2017 Atlanta Falcons preseason game. More

How can the Falcons afford it?

Gomes says the “fan-friendly pricing” idea was in the works for years, even before the groundbreaking ceremony on the property back in 2014. Falcons owner Arthur Blank and CEO Rich McKay wanted to do something radical with food pricing because, as Gomes puts it, “Ballparks, arenas, movie theaters all overcharge us, and we all became used to it… that you get gouged. And we wanted to say, ‘It doesn’t have to be what you’ve always been used to.'”

The stadium has 673 “points of sale,” including food stands as well as alcohol-only stands, and 100% of the stands have the an-first pricing, meaning the $2 hot dogs, $3 vegan hot dogs, $2 bags of popcorn, $5 cheeseburger, and so on. (Not every stand offers every item.) Of course, there are also $9 craft beers, $8 double cheeseburgers, and other higher-end items. But the idea was to not offer the low-price items at a limited number of stands.

In other words, it isn’t a short-term PR stunt. Gomes says people keep asking him, “Is this a 1-year thing, is this a gimmick to get people in the building? It’s not. This is a forever pricing model.” It isn’t just a Falcons model either: it’s the locked-in pricing model for all events at the stadium, which will include MLS games, and concerts—and Super Bowl 53 in 2019.

So, how can the Falcons afford to set the food prices so low?

PSLs, or personal seat licenses, help offset the cost. As is the model at most new NFL arenas these days (dating back to when the Carolina Panthers used them to raise money for the team’s new $250 million stadium in 1996), season tickets at the Falcons’ new home require purchasing a PSL, or personal seat license, which guarantees you first dibs on a certain seat for any event at the stadium. Think of it as a membership fee you pay each year, on top of the price of your actual tickets. (Or think of it like paying for an annual gym membership, and also paying a fee for every class you take there.) It is akin to leasing your seat from the stadium. And the revenues from PSLs go to the stadium, whereas revenue from game tickets is shared with the league.

The PSLs at Mercedes-Benz Stadium aren’t nearly as pricey as they are at other new NFL venues in larger markets, but they aren’t cheap: the entry-level starts at $2,500 per year, per seat, and the highest level is $45,000 per seat. PSLs have generated more than $250 million in revenue for the team.

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