LAST UPDATED ON FEB. 7, 2021 AT 12:06 PM
Will Super Bowl tickets get cheaper as the game draws nearer?
As of this writing, Super Bowl LV tickets average price is $9,117 – down from $12,447 (per TicketIQ).
The exorbitant cost of the game tends to bring up a lot of questions, and this is just one of them.
Go ahead and skip to the answer if you want.
Otherwise, let the Q & A begin…
Read: These are the 4 best NFL ticket sites.
Related: Super Bowl Ticket Prices Are Super High.
Why are Super Bowl tickets so expensive?
The answer is simple – supply & demand. After all, it’s the biggest game for North America’s biggest sport.
In fact it’s so big, it transcends sports. The Super Bowl is also the biggest entertainment, marketing, business, and television event of the year.
This alone makes your odds of scoring a ticket soul-crushing.
If you used, for example, 70,000 as the number of available seats & divided that by 186 million (the approximate number of NFL fans in the U.S), your chances are .0376%. But in reality, it’s far worse than that. Why?
25% of the tickets are allocated to the media, business partners, and such. The remaining 75% goes to the 32 NFL organizations and its fans.
6 Things You Can Buy For The Price Of A Super Bowl Ticket.
So here are your true odds:
- 22.5%, if you’re a season ticket holder for one of the participating teams, which are allocated 17.5% each*
- 6%, if you own a season pass for the hosting team, which gets a 5% share*
- One-tenth of 6%, if you have season tickets for one of the remaining 29 teams, which get 1.2%*
Source: Huffington Post
*Based on a 50,000 season ticket holder base
And if you don’t have season tickets, like the majority of NFL fans? Let’s just say that your chances are roughly equivalent to this:
What other factors can price me out of the Super Bowl?
Will Super Bowl tickets get cheaper? Even if they do, we’re still talking over 4 grand. As crazy as that is, there are also other reasons why the average NFL fan will never, ever get to attend a Super Bowl:
Peripheral costs
Let’s say that someway, somehow, you managed to get Super Bowl tickets at face value. Unless you live within driving distance, you’re going to have to pay ridiculously inflated prices for everything from airfare to hotel rooms to parking. That giddy feeling you got from paying “only” $1000 a ticket will quickly disappear when you realize it’s going to cost you $4000 for your 2-day stay.
Take-it-or-leave-it ticket packages
You found a great deal for a room at AirBnB. And you don’t need no stinkin’ tailgate party. All you want is a ticket to the big game at the best possible price
But if you want in at On Location Experiences (nflonlocation.com), the “Official Hospitality of the NFL”, then you’re getting a hotel room and access to a tailgate party whether you like it or not. And all for the low price of… $6000. $6299, to be exact, was the cheapest package for Super Bowl LII.
Ticket speculation
What is ticket speculation? It’s the practice of selling tickets when you don’t actually have the tickets or even the rights to them. According to this ESPN article, this is common among online ticket brokers.
Most of the time, there isn’t an issue, as ticket sites will “guarantee” your purchase. But if there is, let’s say, a sharp, unexpected spike in demand, there is a chance that you won’t get the tickets you paid for, guarantee or not.
Are sports ticket sites with no service fees actually cheaper?
What influences Super Bowl ticket prices?
There are said to be a number of factors that can affect the ticket cost. I’ll be damned if I know what they are, with the exception of one: matchups.
According to the TickPick forecasting tool, the lowest Super Bowl tickets average price for a Chiefs-Rams matchup ($4667) would be 16% cheaper than the best price if it were the Patriots and the Saints ($5587).
When is the best time to buy Super Bowl tickets?
So, will Super Bowl tickets get cheaper?
Yes.
Historically, prices peak immediately after the conference championships, and then drop during the week of the game. The best time to buy Super Bowl tickets (at least over the last 6 years, anyway) has been 4-7 days prior to the event, when prices bottom out at 20-24% lower than the post-conference championships levels:
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