ARLINGTON, Texas—The problem-plagued Super Bowl suffered another setback just hours before kickoff Sunday, when 1,250 fans found out they couldn't use their promised seats.

The National Football League cited safety fears stemming from the "incomplete installation" of some temporary seats inside Cowboys Stadium, which was expecting more than 100,000 fans.

Most ticket holders were given other vacant seats inside Jerry Jones's showplace stadium, the league said in a statement. But about 400 fans were eventually sent to standing-room areas or told they could watch the game on television at a club inside the $1.2 billion stadium. The affected fans were promised a $2,700 refund – three times the face value of their tickets but far less than many spent to attend the big game.

"For all the money we spent, we could have gone to Europe," said one disappointed fan, Roger O'Toole, a truck driver from Pittsburgh. "It's devastating."

He and his friend Dave Witt, a database administrator, braved travel delays and bad weather to get to Texas and spent $800 a ticket to watch the Super Bowl in person for the first time. They waited in line for two hours to enter the stadium, only to be told that they had no seats but could watch the game on television at the "Miller Lite Club" inside the facility. They said they were not offered refunds.