FANS WILL HAVE TO DIG DEEP FOR TICKETS
The 50th Super Bowl could be the most expensive for ticket buyers.
The average price for a Super Bowl ticket on the secondary market was $5,335 in the minutes after the Carolina Panthers easily secured the NFC title with a victory against the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday night, according to ticket-tracking site SeatGeek.com. The Denver Broncos edged the New England Patriots in the earlier game Sunday.
The price for an average seat dipped to about $5,100 by Monday, but still well ahead of the resale price of each Super Bowl SeatGeek has tracked since 2010.
“The biggest driver of ticket prices this year is less about which teams are playing but where the game is,” SeatGeek spokesman Chris Leyden told USA TODAY Sports. “The Bay Area has one of the highest median incomes in the nation. There’s a lot of wealth out there.”
Last year’s Super Bowl between the Patriots and Seattle Seahawks saw an average resale price of $4,271. The other Super Bowls that SeatGeek has tracked were Super Bowl XLV (Green Bay Packers vs. Pittsburgh Steelers in 2011) $3,561, XLVI (New England Patriots vs. Giants in 2012) $2,991, XLVII (San Francisco 49ers vs. Baltimore Ravens in 2013) $2,479 and XLVIII (Broncos vs. Seattle Seahawks 2014) $2,537.
Heading into the conference championship games last weekend, 28% of those looking for Super Bowl seats on SeatGeek resided in California. The state with the second-most traffic: North Carolina (10%).
“I think many fans there think this is the team’s first real shot a Super Bowl (victory),” Leyden said. “The response from North Carolina has been surprising when you take into account that it’s one of the smaller media markets on the East Coast.”
Leyden said ticket prices for the Super Bowl tend to dip during the two-week break between the conference title games and the big game, last year being the excep- tion as Super Bowl XLIX saw a 57% price jump.
The NFL Ticket Exchange by Ticketmaster (NFL.com/tickets or ticketexchangebyticket master.com/super-bowl-tickets) is the sole league-approved reseller.
At press time, NFL Ticket Exchange prices ranged from $4,095 for corner upper-deck seats to $12,978 for lower-level seats.
StubHub.com spokesman Cameron Papp offered these words of advice for fans trying to purchase tickets on the resale market: “If you care about where you sit, buy early. If you just want to get to the game, wait until the last possible second.”