Guilty Pleasures

Super Ticket Prices

Our neighbor at Margaritaville this month is leaving for the Super Bowl in Las Vegas today. He’s from Kansas City and he’s never been to the big game before, despite their recent, frequent appearance.

We went to the Super Bowl a few years ago when it was hosted in Minnesota, where we live. We made a full-week of entertainment out of it. The game and activities were a blast.

The tickets were exorbitantly expensive – and even more so, now. I looked for comparable seats at this year’s game and they are selling for $9.6K/seat. That’s a wallet-shaking 2.1x the cost that we paid in 2018. Back then I wondered if NFL appeal had peaked, but based on the price of these tickets, it certainly hasn’t.

Who are you pulling for this weekend? I’m going for the Chiefs since QB Mahomes dad used to pitch for our MN Twins.

Images: CNN

10 thoughts on “Super Ticket Prices”

  1. I had a general contractor who worked on my house many years ago and he mentioned his father took him to the first Super Bowl Game in 1967 at Los Angeles Coliseum. The tickets cost $15. I calculated the inflation of the $9,600 ticket at 12% per year over 57 years. NFL ticket prices would easily be one of the highest inflation items on your chart a couple weeks ago.

    My neighbor mentioned that he and a friend went to see the Rolling Stones in Detroit when he was in high school for $10. I checked the online ticket prices for upcoming LA SOFI Stadium, and the cheapest reasonable seat was $300. I calculated the inflation over 52 years at 6.8% which also beats inflation for just about everything else. But it gets worse, my neighbor would have watched the Rolling Stones in a basketball, which would have been my smaller than a football stadium. Rerunning the calculation with closer $1,500 seats resulted in inflation at 10.1%.

    I am pulling for Kansas City. Mahomes is fun to watch.

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    1. Yes – Sports and entertainment would have been a great industry to invest in over the last 5@ years! Rising discretionary income has fueled the market for fun in many ways.

      I wrote an article about rising ticket prices a few years ago. My personal experience is Madonna for $13.50 in 1985. She’s in St Paul next week … similar seat is $257 on Stub Hub. That’s 8.1% inflation.

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    1. Amazing to see how successful she is. Jack and I ran into her in Times Square on New Year’s Eve 2008/09. I snapped a picture of him in front of the ‘Ball’ and turned the camera to show him. She was walking by and said, “Nice picture!” I remember thinking that she was very tall.

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  4. Seems like the Super Bowls have been very competitive over the past decade. Yesterday’s game was no different. The kickers on both teams were supreme. Not one kickoff return all night. And each side broke the Super Bowl long field goal record in the same night. The punters were backing the opposing teams deep into their own territory.

    Finally, I like the new overtime rules. The old rules seemed to over emphasize whether a coin toss went your way or not.

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    1. Agree – Super Bowls have gotten much more interesting. Regarding the kickers – I was impressed with both of them. My Green Bay Packers struggled all year with kicking. They drafted Anders Carlson – brother of successful Daniel Carlson – and he was last in the NFL. Cost them a few games – including beating the 49ers.

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