You can’t spell “blasphemy” without “PSL.”

“Do they necessarily need the money? I don’t think so,” Marilyn Venard of Littleton, a Broncos season-ticket holder for seven decades, told me Monday when I brought up the concept of personal seat licenses, or PSLs. “If they want to keep happy fans, they wouldn’t charge it.”

Marilyn is one of those orange-and-blue lifers, the spine and soul of Broncos Country. She’s had seats in the north end zone at old Mile High, and now Empower Field at Mile High, since 1965. She’s watched a chain of quarterbacks that runs from Jacky Lee and Mickey Slaughter to Bo Nix.

Venard didn’t hesitate to renew her season tickets for 2026 for $3,000, including parking. But when she reads that Forbes.com’s latest “Richest People In The World” chart has Broncos owners Rob Walton and family at No. 11, boasting an estimated net worth of $146 billion, it does raise eyebrows. And blood pressures.

“Let’s put it this way: I think paying for the privilege of paying them money is something I find a little offensive,” Steve Altman told me by phone Monday. He’s held season tickets at Mile High and Empower since 1987.

“And frankly, I think with this particular ownership group, with the money they have, doesn’t really need it. To me, it just seems a gouge on the fans’ side of that.”

In basic terms, PSLs are a one-time fee to pay for the right to then purchase season tickets. In Buffalo, for example, buying a PSL to the new Highmark Stadium grants you those “rights” for a 30-year span. Those licenses can be eventually be sold if the buyer surrenders their season tickets.

Prices vary by stadium and seat location, but the average minimum price point among 18 NFL teams that offered them last September was $2.744, according to PSLSource.com, a third-party marketplace. Per-seat PSL charges last fall on the site ranged from $50 to $50,000.

“Oh, gracious,”  Venard said. “Well, it’s a lot of money. I don’t think I would pay it.

“I understand that football organizations are charging that now, but my goodness.”

“Would that stop you renewing?” I asked.

“It would certainly take some thought,” she replied.

PSLs are a way for owners to defray big costs, such as stadium construction. They’re as much a part of the NFL lexicon now as Bill Belichick, and twice as soulless.

It’s the sort of scheme Mr. Burns would set upon the denizens of Springfield, a gratuity to billionaires from the working class, a mandatory tip collected by corporate overlords. In entertainment terms, it’s a 100-drink minimum to watch the latest slice of low comedy served up by the Las Vegas Raiduhs.

With the Walton-Penner Group planning to build a new stadium privately at Burnham Yard, it’s been presumed for years that PSLs were coming to Broncos Country, just as standard NFL practice. This past Saturday at training camp, team president Damani Leech said the quiet part out loud.

“It seems like it’s a pretty likely thing to happen,” Leech told reporters when asked about PSLs, “but we haven’t made any formal decisions on that.”

All we’d humbly ask of Carrie Walton Penner and Greg Penner as they crunch the numbers is to keep Marilyn in mind. To keep Steve in mind.

And the hundreds of thousands of Broncomaniacs who sat through Paxton Lynch, Kendall Hinton and Lord knows how many snowstorms. The faithful who pack hills and metal bleachers on a scorching August day, because by God, they’d walk through Hell in a gasoline suit to see this franchise back in the Super Bowl again.

“I would (ask), ‘What do they really need the money for?'” Altman said. “I mean, are they interested in the Broncos purely as a business matter, or are they doing this because they want the pleasure of owning an NFL team? You’re talking about some of the richest people in the world.”

Given that the Broncos boast a ticket wait-list of more than 100,000, the market’s betting that if you won’t pay a cover charge, somebody else will. While the introduction of PSLs isn’t designed to purge the voter rolls, so to speak, it can have that effect — especially with older and less well-heeled Broncos faithful.

Altman understands why his season tickets in the 300 level cost $2,800 to renew. But he worries about losing Broncos Country’s most loyal, about trading the folks who celebrate a touchdown with a beer and shot with, shall we say, more of your wine-and-cheese crowd.

“‘Would they really need (the PSL money)?'” Altman wondered. “The revenue they’ll get from the seats themselves, that’s pretty much all theirs.”

It’s a fair question. The Walton-Penner Group are the richest owners in the NFL, and it’s not close. Forbes data this past February pegged Rob Walton’s estimated then-net worth of $121.3 billion — roughly five times that of the league’s second-richest ownership group, the Hunt family ($24.8 billion), Texas oil heirs and longtime stewards of the rival Chiefs.

In fact, you’d have to add up the NFL’s second-ranked through seventh-ranked owners’ net worths as of February ($126.6 million) to match or exceed the Walton-Penner Group’s clout. To put that number in more context, Rams owner Stan Kroenke, whose portfolio includes the Nuggets, Avalanche, Rapids and Mammoth, checked in at No. 4 on the NFL’s owners list tis past winter, with a reported net worth of $21.3 billion.

To them, the Broncos are a line item on a budget. To Marilyn? They’re family.

Losing her seats would meaning losing contact with old friends, losing a sense of of community. Venard went to Super Bowls with her neighbors in Section 323. To conference title games. Tailgates.

“And you do become a family,” Venard said. “At the beginning of the season, everybody hugs everybody, welcoming them back.”

Time and tide wait for no man, but she’d miss those hugs dearly. You can’t spell “unscrupulous” without “PSL.” You can’t spell “powerless,” either.

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