Tickets Will Cost You, But It Could Be Worse

Seventeen-hundred bucks for a football ticket isn't cheap, but in the exclusive province of the Super Bowl, this year's game may be a real bargain.

Last week, ticket brokers and online ticket exchanges such as StubHub and RazorGator reported that the cheapest "get-in-the-door" tickets were selling for about $1,700 to $1,800. That's more than double the face value of most Super Bowl XLIII tickets, but it was extremely low for less than two weeks before the game, exchange officials say.

Ticket prices drop as the game approaches and ticket sellers get increasingly desperate. Normally, the cheapest tickets wouldn't drop this low until a couple of days before the game, said Sean Pate, head of corporate communications for San Francisco-based StubHub. Not surprisingly, ticket exchanges are blaming the recession as well as the lack of teams from big markets such as Chicago and New York.

Sensing that tickets are about to drop further, some buyers are waiting it out.

Pete Jovanovich, a rabid Steelers fan from Baltimore, is buying two tickets well ahead of time to make sure his elderly father can get in, probably for about $1,600 apiece. But the rest of the family is prepared to scalp tickets outside Raymond James Stadium if necessary. He's hoping to score tickets for $1,200 apiece.

"Like everybody else out there, I'm trying to figure out how to acquire tickets and jump in and get the best price," he said.

This year, the bulk of the Super Bowl tickets, about 52,000, are upper level and have a face value of $800; an additional 17,000 tickets run $1,000 apiece and are lower-level and club seats.

A lucky 1,000 people will get upper-level seats at the cut-rate price of $500 apiece, which is the NFL's nod to the recession. But those prices are only for those fortunate enough to buy them directly from the Arizona Cardinals, Pittsburgh Steelers, their hometown team or the NFL.

Generally, the teams hold a lottery among season ticket holders for rights to buy the tickets, and they hold some back for sponsors. The NFL distributes about 25 percent of the total.

For the first time, Ticketmaster Entertainment will open a Super Bowl ticket office. It opens Thursday at Channelside Bay Plaza in Tampa. Ticketmaster has inked a deal with the NFL to be the league's official exchange for tickets sold on the secondary market.

Last week, most online ticket exchanges reported that ticket prices are off by 20 percent or more from past years. That's partly because of less demand from corporations.

Local Anheuser-Busch distributor Pepin Distributing traditionally purchased a suite at Raymond James for Buccaneers games. But the company opted not to renew at the end of last season because it decided the money was better spent on employees. When it gave up its suite, it also gave up its right to buy Super Bowl tickets, said Pepin marketing director Bill Gieseking.

The average ticket price on StubHub last week was $2,593, said Pate, the StubHub official. That's down from $3,536 for last year's New York Giants-New England Patriots game, and down from $4,004 for the 2007 Indianapolis Colts-Chicago Bears matchup. A new online exchange, LiveStub, has watched its average ticket price drop from $6,000 apiece to $3,900 in the past three weeks, LiveStub's Michael Hershfield said.

The cheapest tickets were running about $1,700 on Thursday, according to RazorGator Chief Executive Officer Jeff Lapin, but a check Saturday showed that prices had fallen to about $1,500.

The cheapest tickets for last year's game in Phoenix were $2,000, Lapin said.

"The recession has hit the ticket market like any consumer product," he said. "Prices are down. It's not a must-have item like toothpaste. It's a discretionary item."

Despite the recession, there are still opportunities to spend a fortune. Many of the priciest tickets are held by ticket brokers, who sometimes scrape together tickets from coaches, players and other league officials.

Last week, one broker from the Bay area, Scoretix.com of Clearwater, listed a 36-person, club-level suite for $388,700. A representative declined to comment. Other brokers and online ticket exchanges also were offering suites for $300,000 and more, according to their Web sites.