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Commanders fan pays $400 for seat from RFK stadium, DC says sale was premature

Confusion with the third-party vendor Events DC will use for the sale of stadium seats led to fans placing orders even though seat removal hasn't started yet.

WASHINGTON — The D.C. government will be selling memorabilia from RFK Stadium as the city moves to tear down the 61-year-old landmark. Already there's some confusion around the premature sale of some of the stadium seats inside the stadium.

“I believe I told my wife before we got married, 'someday these seats are going for sale, and I'm just buying one and you don't get a say in that,'" Alex Zeese said with a laugh.

The long time Washington fan and “The Hog Sty” podcast host didn’t hesitate when he saw an ad for authentic RFK stadium seats for sale on Archer Surplus Stadium Seats' website.

WUSA9 was the first to report the demolition contract signed by the city includes a clause that will allow fans to buy memorabilia, like seats from the stands and even the scoreboard, from inside the old stadium. But days after paying for his piece of D.C. sports history, Zeese got an email from Archer refunding his money. The memorabilia company told him it “got a call...from the demolition contractor saying that he was in hot water with the owner of the stadium about selling the seats before the owner had gotten 250 seats out for their use.”

The owner that the memorabilia company was referring to was Events DC, which manages the RFK site. On Thursday, Events DC told WUSA9 this was all a big misunderstanding, and that while Archer will be the company that eventually sells RFK Stadium seats for the city, Archer had pre-maturely started taking orders.

Events DC said it is still in the process of creating a plan to sell the stadium seats, but could not share any details including how many of the 40,000 or so remaining in RFK will eventually be sold. They added it would be impossible to have the demolition company pull out any of seats right now, because they have to remove all the asbestos hidden inside the stadium first.

When the RFK seats finally do go on sale, Zeese said he will try to be first in line, once again.

“Please get rid of all the cancer-causing asbestos, and then I'll buy one,” Zeese said. 

Zeese said he paid about $400 for a single seat. Whether that will still be the price when they actually go on sale remains to be seen. Events DC said all the stadium seats will have be removed, disassembled, checked for safety and then re-assembled before they can be sold.  

RELATED: 'No Commanders Clause' could threaten DC's push to gain control of RFK site

RELATED: DC firefighters investigating cause of fires at vacant RFK stadium

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