It's buyer beware when shopping for Super Bowl tickets. About 68,000 tickets have been sold and most oin the open market are super expensive. (Photo by CNHI News Service)

By Maureen Hayden
CNHI News Service

INDIANAPOLIS – The price tag of a prime seat in Lucas Oil Stadium for Super Bowl XLVI is officially $1,000, but cash-rich fans will shell out multiples of that to see the NFL championship game.

Thanks to a thriving and perfectly legal resale market, premium ticket prices for the Feb. 5 event are climbing into the five figures.

While a seat in the stadium's nose-bleed section is going for four times or more its face value of $800, some of the best spots are being resold, online, for $20,000 a pop.

That's chump change for whomever decides to plunk down $1.1 million for the use of a luxury suite in the stadium, advertised on the popular ticket exchange site, Stub Hub, just two weeks before the game.

But it's a lot more money than fans paid to see the first Super Bowl in 1967. Tickets went for $12 for a great seat, and $6 in the cheap-seat sections. This year's halftime show features aging rock icon Madonna. Fans at Super Bowl I were entertained at halftime by a couple of marching bands.

Pro football may be a sport loved by the masses – the NFL sold 17 million tickets last year and it has its own official beer sponsor, Bud Light. But ticket-pricing experts say the Super Bowl has become an event for people on a champagne budget who can afford its super-sized ticket prices.

“It's a different animal, like no other event in sports,” said Joris Drayer, a Temple University assistant professor of sports management who studies sports ticket prices. “When I do my research on this topic, I have to exclude the Super Bowl because it's just so different. It's a spectacle more than a game.”

The spectacle of it is beefed up by pricey parties – $1,000 will get you into the “Leather and Laces” soiree hosted by Playboy magazine – and pumped up prices for hotel rooms, parking spots and bar cover charges.

The NFL is a bit defensive about that perception. NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy insists that the formula for distributing Super Bowl tickets is fan-based. He said about 75 percent of the tickets are doled out directly to the NFL team franchises, at face value prices, for them to divvy up to their fans.

The breakdown: Each conference champ team gets 17.5 percent of the tickets; the host city team gets 5 percent of the tickets; and the 29 other teams each get 1.2 percent of the ticket share. The NFL takes the remaining 25.2 percent and spreads it out among the NFL Players Association, event sponsors, some charities (to auction off to raise money for their cause) and the media.

Mike Peduto, owner of the Indianapolis-based ticket broker, Circle City Tickets, said it's been years since the average cost-conscious fan has had a shot at going to a Super Bowl game.

“It's not really possible to get a ticket at face value anymore,” said Peduto. “But there are plenty of tickets out there if you're willing to pay the price.”

---
Maureen Hayden is the CNHI Indiana state reporter. Contact her at maureen.hayden@indianamediagroup.com.

x x x x

Optional Sidebar:

By Maureen Hayden
CNHI News Service

Super Bowl XLVI is officially sold out but it's not impossible to score some tickets. You'll have to do so on the secondary market, where brokers and scalpers offer tickets at super-inflated prices.

Here's a few things to know if you're having last-moment fantasies of seeing the game inside Lucas Oil Stadium.

-- Buyer Beware. The NFL cautions fans to use reputable brokers. NFL Ticket Exchange, the official NFL ticket exchange site, is the only site to guarantee the ticket is valid. But StubHub, the eBay-owned online ticket exchange site, will guarantee a full refund, plus return its service fee, if tickets are bogus. Circle City Tickets, a longtime ticket broker in Indianapolis, works only with reputable sellers with a solid track record.

-- Be wary of scalpers on the street. The city of Indianapolis has licensed only a small number of ticket brokers to work inside the “super zone” around the stadium. If they can't show proof of the license, and if you're not sure the license is valid, move on.

-- It's a free market, operating on demand and supply. Ten days before the game, NFL Ticket Exchange had about 1,300 tickets for sale with an average price of about $4,000. The price could go up or down closer to the game, depending on how desperate sellers become.

-- If the price is too good to be true, it is. Counterfeit tickets are a chronic Super Bowl problem.

Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Deputy Chief Mike Bales said IMPD officers will be on the lookout, but they can only do so much, he said. Ten days before the game, someone on Craigslist was offering six tickets for $700 – the same day that NFL Ticket Exchange was selling the cheapest single seat for $2,700. “People need to use some common sense,” he said.

-- Don't assume you'll know a bogus ticket from the real deal. NFL tickets are stamped with a hologram, a black-light sensor invisible to the naked eye, and other tough-to-duplicate features, but it doesn't stop forgers from trying. In 2006, Detroit police charged a woman with selling 105 fake tickets for $400 apiece.

-- The Super Bowl is more than a game. And that's more than a slogan. Shelling out thousands of dollars to stand in long security lines to sit in too-narrow seats in a loud crowd of revelers may be fun, but it's far from the only way to experience it. Scores of sports bars in downtown Indianapolis are set up for the overflow, but be prepared to spend some big bucks – up to $200 a person – on cover charges and mandatory minimums on food and drink expenditures.

---
Maureen Hayden is the CNHI Indiana state reporter. Contact her at maureen.hayden@indianamediagroup.com.