Secondary ticket selling website TicketLuck has reported alarming figures on the state of the Super Bowl tickets market as the trends are not comparable to any of the previous years. Tickets are reported to be selling at a much higher price than their actual face value of $800. According to figures reported by the website, the average price for a normal ticket to the event is more than $4,000 while prices for All-Day Packages average around $80,000 a pop.
While tickets are usually sold at a higher than face value price on secondary ticket selling websites, Anastasia Lyman from TicketLuck.com exclaimed that, “The prices this year are totally inflated, tickets for last year’s Super Bowl went for around $2,000 each but the current state of the market is alarming”. When asked if she feared that the high prices would drive customers away, Lyman replied, “We are not thinking about that. The Super Bowl has time and again proven to be the greatest show in America and we are sure that people will not give up on the event, especially with the Super Bowl at Cowboys Stadium”. NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy seemed to agree with Lyman, “If we could build a stadium for 300,000, we still wouldn't come close to meeting demand,” he said.
One of the main reasons for the inflation of prices in the market is the fact that the tickets are not yet available directly from the NFL. While the NFL has confirmed that they have sold out most of their 5,000 On-Location packages, single tickets are not yet available. This can be attributed to the fact that the NFL distributes its ticket allocation amongst the participating teams and sponsors and only has about 25% of the tickets to sell for itself. Previous market figures indicate that once the tickets become more easily available, the average prices tend to go down. “The only people buying tickets now are the ones who don’t want to risk missing out on the tickets altogether, once the tickets are readily available from primary sources, the average price on the secondary ticket market tends to drop,” said Lyman.
Frank Supovitz, senior vice president of events for the NFL also raised the question of the security of the purchases made from secondary ticket sellers by saying, “What's amusing to me is that we haven't even distributed tickets, yet you will start seeing offers on websites months and months ahead of the Super Bowl.” While this may be a genuine concern for some, Anastasia Lyman from TicketLuck said that, “We make sure all our customers get their tickets as we offer a 100% guarantee and make sure all our tickets are sourced from the most reliable sellers who we have done business with in the past. There is absolutely no chance that a customer would get the bad end of a deal.”
The Super Bowl in Arlington, Texas, is on the 6th of February, 2011 and is expected to be a sold out event as always. While there is no fixed date to when the tickets will go on sale, fans continue to flock to secondary ticket sellers who are already offering tickets to the event. The actual scenario can only be measured once the tickets officially go on sale.
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