Better seating, including more cup holders, awaits Chiefs fans at Arrowhead this fall

It’s all about the cup holders.

For the first time, seats in the upper deck of Arrowhead Stadium will have cup holders as the Chiefs replace nearly all of the seats in that area as a part of an effort to enhance the fan experience in the stadium.

Leaks in the concrete of the upper level, which also serves as the ceiling for the level below, forced the Chiefs to remove all existing seats from the area to reseal the concrete.

Rather than re-installing the old seats, Chiefs president Mark Donovan saw an opportunity to upgrade to something new — especially considering nearly 60 percent of the seats removed were in such bad shape they couldn’t be salvaged.

Through meetings with the Chiefs’ operations staff and the customer service team, Donovan learned just how crucial it is to add cup holders to the seats.

“One of our junior customer service people said, ‘Well, do we have cup holders added to the upper deck?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, we’re putting new seats in,’” Donovan said, retelling the story at the annual owners meetings in Arizona. “There’s going to be cup holders. And they’re like, ‘That is huge.’

“I’m like, ‘Wow, how big is this?’ They’re like, ‘Huge, this is more important than the seat size and color, anything. Put cup holders.’”

In addition to that all-important addition, most of the new seats in the stadium will also be wider.

Though most seats are being replaced, those in the east end zone will remain the same for at least this season as the Chiefs explore options to upgrade the east video board.

While the Chiefs are leaving the oval videoboard up in the west end zone to preserve Lamar Hunt’s iconic design, they’ll gut the inside and enhance the technology. Using the plans of the west video board as a trial run, the Chiefs will then figure out how to enhance the east board at a later date. Once those decisions are made, those seats will also most likely be replaced.

“We’ve got an opportunity to sort of test it and make sure we get the right one before we go there,” Donovan said. “That’s the only reason we’re not doing those seats.”

Because those seats aren’t changing, the Chiefs have frozen their price, making those seats the only ones to not increase in price for next season.

“You got to be transparent with (the fans),” Donovan said. “We’re not making this change because we don’t want to put seats in and then take them out. It’s not a good business decision, and we want to put the best product in there when we know what we want to put in. So hang with us for a year and let’s see where we are.”