Super Bowl tickets have never been a bargain. At least not in the last year’s LIV or so.
But for those looking to attend the big game at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles on Sunday, prices won’t be as high as they were just a few weeks ago.
There were also record prices at last year’s game in Tampa, Florida, when SeatGeek and StubHub, two of the top resale services, sold seats for over $8,000. Ticket prices have been inflated due to the limited capacity regulations imposed because of the pandemic, and also because the Tampa Bay Buccaneers players played in their own stadium – a first Super Bowl.
The pre-pandemic record was the 2020 game between Kansas City and San Francisco in Miami, when the average price was between $6,500 and $7,200, depending on the service.
With this year’s game set two weeks ago, with the homegrown LA Rams going up against the championship-winning Cincinnati Bengals, record resale prices seemed possible. The price of all three resale services for a single ticket is around US$10,000. Now it doesn’t look like prices will be higher than recent records.
But they will still be expensive. In addition to the ticket price, parking tickets cost hundreds of dollars, and go up to $5,700 if you want to park in one of the closest parking lots to the stadium.
“Parking has always been a big issue for the Super Bowls,” said Brett Goldberg, another TickPick resale service. “The limited parking became much more limited because of the space the NFL took up.” Some fans who can’t afford match tickets can choose to park their cars so they can line up and watch the game on TV from a variety of places.
In general, parking tickets, including those located quite far away from SoFi Stadium, will cost an average of about $516 on SeatGeek, with a minimum of $275 on StubHub.
For those who really want to get inside the stadium, prices may be a fraction of the highs of a few weeks ago, but they’re still in the thousands.
On TickPick, the average fare purchased on Friday and early Saturday is around $5,100, bringing the overall average fare purchased on the service down to $6,500, on par with all of 2020.
“The fan base responds to the lower valuation,” says Goldberg.
As of Saturday morning, the average fare purchased on SeatGeek in the previous 24 hours was $6,414, up from the previous day’s average of $5,143, but still a fraction of what it cost only after the conference championship.
Ticket sellers often cut prices in the days leading up to the Super Bowl, fearing they’ll miss out on a chance to sell tickets.
“It’s an end-of-life item,” said Chris Leyden, director of consumer strategy at SeatGeek.
StubHub says the average price of tickets sold on the site over the past 24 hours dropped to $4,100. That’s taking the average overall average ticket price sold since sale began at $6,700, well above the 2020 mark of $6,500.
With the hometown Rams, one of the teams taking part in the Super Bowl, the expectation is that there could be more last-minute buys than the normal Super Bowl, which is often played in a neutral venue where most fans have to arrive.
That could lead to unusually last-minute average ticket prices for fans who missed out buying at the bottom of the market, even if prices remain below the current overall average.
“Once the late buying behavior kicks in, as I expected, the price won’t be able to move up,” said Akshay Khanna, general manager of North America operations at StubHub.
