How much do Super Bowl tickets cost?
The Super Bowl is the biggest game in America, how much has it cost over the years just to, "be in the building?"
FILE PHOTO- Derrick Coleman of the Seattle Seahawks, center, presented surprise tickets to Super Bowl XLVIII to the Erin Kovalcik, left, and Riley Kovalcik, right, and their family, on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2014 in Hoboken, N.J. The average price of tickets to Sunday's Super Bowl are running over $5,000 on the secondary ticket market.
Charles Sykes/Duracell/File/AP
The average ticket price to attend Super Bowl XLIX in Glendale, Ariz. has jumped over $5,000 in the past week on the secondary market, as of Friday morning, according to a report from Forbes.
New England is making its sixth Super Bowl appearance since 2002, and some feared the ticket market for the big game could be suffering from "Patriots-fatigue," according to CNN Money. Tickets prices were selling for as low as $1,600 for the cheapest seats after the Super Bowl matchup was decided at last week's conference championship games.
The price was actually higher before the fans knew who would be playing in game, and average price to attend the game was $2,879, CNN reported.
If ticket prices had stayed in that low range, then it would mean that the last three Super Bowls have had the lowest ticket prices in the last ten years. Last year the average ticket price for Super Bowl XLVIII in New York was $2,646, according to CBS. Two years ago when the 49ers and Ravens met in Super Bowl XLVII in New Orleans, the average ticket price was $2,900, according to SB nation.
Today most fans get their tickets through third party vendors like Stub Hub, so any examination of ticket prices should examine the secondary market, which is exploding according to the Forbes report. This could be the most expensive Super Bowl to buy tickets on the secondary market – Tiq IQ, a website that monitors the price of sporting events, puts the average price at $5,000.
Tiq IQ started keeping track of the price of the secondary market back in 2010, and the previous high for a Super Bowl was over $4,600 for the Patriots-Giants showdown in 2012, according to Forbes.
Between 1994 and 2003, the average ticket price at the Super Bowl increased 129 percent from $175 to $400, according to a CBS examination of Super Bowl prices through the years.
By comparison, tickets for the first Super Bowl cost $12 back in 1967. At that time, the average cost of a new home was $25,000 and a movie ticket was $1.20. To put that in perspective, CBS reported that seats for the Patriots-Giants Super Bowl in February of 2012 cost $1,200 – 100 times the gate price nearly 50 years ago.