TICKET PRICES INFLATE FOR AFC TITLE TILT
Gillette ducat averages $736, first-row pair for $20,000
Fans hoping to see the New England Patriots take on the Pittsburgh Steelers in Sunday’s AFC Championship at Gillette Stadium can expect to fork over at least $335 plus fees for a single ticket. That was the cheapest ticket price on the secondary resale market yesterday for the conference title game in Foxboro, according to TicketIQ , a New Yorkbased ticket search engine.
The average ticket price for the game was $736 — a more than 6 percent increase from last year’s final average for the much-anticipated matchup between quarterbacks Tom Brady and Peyton Manning — and the most expensive since the company started tracking prices in 2011.
“Right now, the 2017 AFC Championship has the most expensive average asking price we’ve tracked in seven years, as well as the most expensive ‘get-in price,’” said TicketIQ founder and CEO Jesse Lawrence, whose site aggregates more than 90 percent of the NFL secondary ticket market, including the NFL Ticket Exchange and SeatSmart.
“There’s not a lot of supply, so I don’t expect prices to move down,” Lawrence said. “Anybody who can get in for under $300 is a good target to be shooting for.”
There were just under 2,500 AFC Championship tickets on the secondary resale market yesterday, according to TicketIQ , compared to 5,800 in 2015, when the Patriots last hosted the AFC Championship in Foxboro.
“I think there’s always the question of ‘Is this Brady’s last AFC Championship at home?’ ” Lawrence said. “Brady-(Ben) Roethlisberger is now the best quarterback rivalry in the AFC at this point.”
Ticket prices were as high as $3,500 each plus fees yesterday on TicketIQ — with a minimum purchase of two Putnam Club seats.
U.S. buyers accounted for 92 percent of the AFC Championship ticket sales as of yesterday on StubHub, but the online ticket reseller said fans from 13 countries, including Japan and Australia, have made purchases. Massachusetts was the top-buying state at 31 percent of sales, compared to 3 percent for Pennsylvania.
StubHub ticket prices ranged from $331 to $20,000 for a pair in the first row of the lower home sideline and a VIP parking pass.
Parking passes also are up for grabs separate from tickets on StubHub, with asking prices ranging from $168 for parking 1.1 miles from Gillette Stadium to $791 for Putnam Club parking.