The last time the Super Bowl was held at the Arizona Cardinals home stadium, many ticket brokers were left hurting as the average ticket price on the secondary market inched toward $10,000.
Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs fans would pay nearly the same if they bought tickets now. According to TicketIQ, the average resale price in the hours after Sunday’s championship games was $9,720 — just $3 less than the record average price paid to get into State Farm Stadium in 2015.
But get-in prices — the cheapest seats currently available — are starting out under the two most recent Super Bowls, although well more than the face value for Super Bowl tickets that usually start around $1,000.
The cheapest seats — minus fees — were in the $5,000 range. The most expensive seats on SeatGeek and StubHub were around $38,000 minus fees that can push that price closer to $50,000.
Last year’s game in Southern California saw the cheapest seats start at $6,366 before the price dipped to $4,200 on game day. The 2021 Super Bowl in Tampa — which had limited capacity due to COVID-19 guidelines — began at $9,233 before it fell to $4,900 on the day of the game, according to TicketIQ.
Super Bowl XLIX, the February 2015 game between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks, was the most expensive NFL title game on record and the first where tickets a day or two after the AFC and NFC championship games rose considerably closer to the game.
Brokers sold tickets to consumers thinking that ticket inventory would match the trends of past Super Bowls. When those tickets didn’t come on the market, brokers scrambled to buy the few tickets available as they tried to fulfill tickets promised to customers — leaving many brokers underwater.
Many who thought they had tickets for the game through brokers arrived in the Phoenix area only to find out those brokers couldn’t fulfill those orders. By the weekend, prices were double what they were just a week prior and climbed from there.
The largest share of Super Bowl tickets (35%) is split between the two Super Bowl teams, with the rest going to the rest of the NFL (nearly 35%), the NFL league office (about 25%), and the host city (5%).
More must-reads: