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Super Bowl 2009 Seats Likely To Be Hot And Pricey

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By BAIRD HELGESON, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 24, 2008

TAMPA - Football fans who want to attend next year's Super Bowl in Tampa should prepare to pay a lot more for tickets than they did the last time the area hosted the event, seven years ago.

Ticket prices for the 2009 Super Bowl have not been released, but attendees of this year's game in Glendale, Ariz., are paying $700 to $900 a seat, said Reid Sigmon, executive director of the Tampa Bay Super Bowl Host Committee.

Super Bowl attendees in 2001 paid $325 to $425 a seat to watch the Baltimore Ravens clobber the New York Giants 34-7 at Raymond James Stadium.

"The NFL realized the tickets had more value," Sigmon told a group of business leaders at the University of Tampa on Wednesday morning.

Stubhub.com, a Web site that buys and sells concert and game tickets, is offering tickets to the Feb. 3 Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants for $2,450 to $18,500.
Sigmon and other members of the host committee will spend the coming months looking for corporate sponsors and trying to ensure next year's event is successful.

The host committee has raised about $2 million toward its goal of $8 million in private donations, said Sigmon, who helped organize previous Super Bowls in Jacksonville and Tampa.

"We feel pretty good about where we are at," he said.

Taxpayers will kick in up to $4 million to cover Tampa Bay's Super Bowl costs through tourism tax revenue from Hillsborough and Pinellas counties and a state grant.

The $12 million budget for hosting the game has more than doubled since 2001, Sigmon said.

"The NFL has gotten a lot savvier and has asked the local host community to pay for more," he said.

In the past, the NFL would pay to replace the playing field before the game. Now that cost falls to the community.

This spring, the host committee will begin recruiting roughly 7,000 volunteers needed for Super Bowl-related activities.

Many of the volunteers will work as ambassadors to help visitors at the airport, hotels and at the NFL Experience, an interactive theme park with games, displays and various entertainment attractions.

For the latest information, check out the host committee's Web site: http:// www.tampabaysuperbowl .com/.

Reporter Baird Helgeson can be reached at (813) 259-7668 or bhelgeson@tampatrib.com.

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