Top secret: How the NFL controls Super Bowl ticket sales. Neither the league nor the Broncos will say how many spots to the game went to Colorado fans.
Broncos season- ticket holders got one of two e- mails within a few hours of the team’s down- to-the-wire win over the New England Patriots, before the rush of a nerve- wracking AFC championship had even begun to wear off.
How many were among the lucky ones, whose inboxes held offers of face- value tickets to the Super Bowl?
That’s a secret the Broncos and NFL won’t tell.
The Broncos received thousands of tickets from the NFL, although the league won’t say exactly how many. Of those, an unknown amount were offered to Broncos season- ticket holders, and an unknown number were sold to PrimeSport, the Broncos’ “travel partner.”
Season- ticket holders who got the bad- news email notifying them they didn’t win the ticket lottery instead were offered Prime Sport travel packages to San Francisco ranging from $ 2,000 to $ 7,500 per person depending on airfare and hotel.
Mike Siegrist was on the way home from the game Sunday when he got the email suggesting he book a travel package through the Atlanta- based ticket company.
“Win or lose, the lottery is fine,” the season- ticket holder said. “It is wrong, however, after fans support the team year after year and we get to the Super Bowl, to take tickets which could be included in the lottery and sell them to a broker.”
The Broncos play in a stadium owned by taxpayers and should “be transparent about how they split the tickets they receive,” he said. “Their continued refusal to address the issue only leads us all to wonder what they are hiding.”
Denver- area consumers are paying, through a sales tax, the majority of the $ 400 million construction cost of Sports Authority Field at Mile High, which opened in 2001.
Broncos and league officials wouldn’ t say how many tickets were offered to fans two years ago, the last time Denver was in the Super Bowl, and they wouldn’t say thisweek either.
Prime Sport also would not say how many tickets the company purchased from the Broncos.
Tim Hoops, a Broncos season- ticket holder since 1967 who has not won any of the team’s eight Super Bowl lotteries over nearly 40 years, was grateful for the “fun ride” this season but annoyed by the team’s secrecy leading up to the big game.
He called it “hypocritical that they cherish their strong fan base but totally manipulate them and their pocketbooks.”
The two Super Bowl teams — the Broncos and the Carolina Panthers — each receive 17.5 percent of tickets. Capacity for a regularseason game at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., is about 68,500, but capacity for the Super Bowl “hasn’t been finalized yet,” said NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy.
Doing simple math shows the Broncos got about 11,600 tickets, although the team and the league would confirm only that the number is in the ballpark. The Broncos have 23,000 seasonticket accounts, totaling 71,000 seats.
Broncos spokesman Patrick Smyth said the “limited number” of tickets fromthe league was divided among season- ticket holders and several other “internal and external” groups. Seasonticket holders were chosen through a computer- generated lottery weighted by tenure.
The Panthers said their total allotment of Super Bowl tickets is less than 10,000, The Charlotte Observer reported Friday. A team spokesman said 7,500 to 8,000 of those tickets go to personal seat license owners. The others go to players’ and coaches’ families and friends and others affiliated with the team.
The NFL retains 25 percent of Super Bowl tickets to sell to media members, sponsors and others. The San Francisco 49ers, as hosts of this year’s game, get 5 percent of the tickets, and the remaining NFL teams each get 1.2 percent.
Before the Broncos last went to the Super Bowl, the NFL was the target of a class- action lawsuit alleging the league violated New Jersey’s anti- ticket- scalping law. The league sells just 1 percent of Super Bowl tickets directly to the public through its lottery system, forcing other fans to buy them for higher prices in the secondary market, the lawsuit said.
New Jersey law prohibits withholding more than 5 percent of tickets to an event from sale to the public.
A judge sided with the NFL and dismissed the lawsuit. “It went nowhere,” said attorney Greg Kohn, who is representing irked football fans. “It’s just more evidence that they need to be held accountable.”
The New York attorney general’s office has launched an investigation into the NFL’s ticketing practices for possible antitrust violations, according to news reports this week.
The attorney general’s office released a report Thursday criticizing “price floors” for tickets, particularly by sports leagues, including the NFL, The Associated Press reported.
The report said many NFL teams encourage or even require ticket holders to use Ticketmaster’s NFL Ticket Exchange platform, where the seller is prohibited from cutting the price below face value. That prevents lower prices when demand drops, making it harder for season- ticket holders to sell their tickets late in a season when their team is playing poorly.
On Fridaymorning, there were 209 ticket listings for Super Bowl 50 on the NFL Ticket Exchange offered from $ 3,480 to $ 15,000 each.