A look at Super Bowl ticket prices through the years
The worst-kept secret in sports may revolve around Super Bowl tickets, which advertise a face value but usually sell for two, three, four times that figure.
This year, certainly, will be no different: tickets for Sunday’s game in Indianapolis technically cost between $800 to $1,200, but only a select number of fans get the chance to buy them for that.
Instead, provided you’re not a Colts season ticket holder, league sponsor or other VIP, your charge for going to the Super Bowl this year should came at an average clip somewhere between $2,800 and $3,623, according to new reports from StubHub and Ticket Exchange.
That’s a lot, but how does it stack up against prices from Super Bowl’s past?
Interestingly, median ticket prices for this year’s game are down from where they stood in 2009, when at the peak of the recession they still went for about $3,100.
*Bing: Look up Super Bowl tickets on StubHub
This year, however, the costliest tickets are still a sight to behold. In 2008, the max seat price was – ahem – just $9,850. So far, for Sunday’s Giants-Pats rematch, already one seat on the 40-yard line has been sold for $17,048.
Here’s a snapshot of Super Bowl ticket prices through the years:
-Super Bowl I, 1967: Football’s first Super Bowl opens with ticket prices cheap even when inflation is considered. From $6 to $12, tickets to Super Bowl I would cost just $81 at most in today’s dollars.
-Super Bowl XIV, 1980: Tickets to the Steelers-L.A. Rams game in Pasadena cost much more than they did 13 years earlier, but at $75-$150 for a seat still come cheap. A goofy quote from the Pittsburgh Press’ Jim O’Brien in 1980: “(Scalpers) are getting – can you believe this? – as much as $350 for a seat on the 50-yard line.” Can you believe this?!
-Super Bowl XXVII, 1993: A case of communism at the Cowboys-Bills Super Bowl in L.A. All 103,000 seats at the Rose Bowl are priced at $175 per ticket, no matter their location.
-Super Bowl XXXIII, 1999: A monumental boom in just six years. A little more than half a decade after tickets went for as little as $175, the Broncos-Falcons Super Bowl in Miami brings with it South Beach-inspired prices. Tickets balloon to $1,700 each on average, with scalpers charging at least $5,000 for a midfield seat.
A decade later, as we discussed earlier, ticket prices had nearly doubled, and now here we are today, when a single seat on the 40-yard line costs almost $20,000.
Oh, and want a luxury suite at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis Sunday? If you can get one, that’ll be $605,898, thank you very much.
By Jason Buckland, MSN Money
Posted by: Elmo | Jan 30, 2022 5:19:54 PM
And the Americans whine, worry and wonder why their economy is in a shambles. As in much of professional sports, which to a large extent starts or stops in the grand old USA... they've taken "THE GAME" away from their grassroots and no matter the hype and kudos to "their" fans and no matter the media-correct verbal diarrhea about having the "best fans in the world" forwhatever sport they're spouting off on that week... the corporate big wigs and internet ticket sheisters will someday get bitten in their own derrieres. SUPERBowl = SUPERRipOff
Posted by: John | Jan 30, 2022 8:23:03 PM
The only shocking thing here is that there are people stupid enough to pay these prices for something as ridiculously insignificant as watching a football game.