Oct 19, 2008
Recession? what recession?
Super Bowl tickets, which have long since gone for obscene amounts of money, will now have a face value of $1000 (mind you, scalpers and others have long since been selling them for thousands more for years). More info from the L.A. Times,
For the first time, tickets for the NFL’s championship game will have a four-figure face value — $1,000 for a single seat to Super Bowl XLIII at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla.
About 17,000 of the tickets will be priced at $1,000 — those in the club and suite sections — with about 53,000 more priced at $800.
Also, presumably in response to the sagging economy, the league has set aside 1,000 tickets with a $500 face value, the first time the NFL has ever lowered the price from the previous season’s game. Last season’s ticket prices were $900 and $700.
Over the course of 22 seasons, the face value of prime tickets has climbed from $100 to $1,000. And the cost of tickets doesn’t factor in food, parking, hotels, travel and the like.
McCarthy said the league has yet to work out distribution plans for the $500 tickets. As for the other tickets, the participating teams will split 35% of them; as the host team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers will receive 5%; the other 29 teams will each receive 1.2%; and 25.2% will go to the league office for business partners, charities and media.
Two notes of importance with this news. Firstly, the NFL truly believes that the recession or depression or whatever our economy decides to be in, will have little effect on Super Bowl revenue…and they are right. Yes, they so graciously set aside 1,000 tickets at $500, but seriously…17,000 tickets are at $1,000 a piece, so I don’t think the cheaper tickets are going to put the NFL in the poor house.
The second point, is that the $1,000 face value isn’t really a big deal, nor is it surprising. The Super Bowl has long been a game for corporate partners and CEO’s, not for that fan who wears a foam finger and paints his chest in the middle of December. Maybe the average plumber or “six-packer” can’t afford the tickets, but it certainly wouldn’t be an issue for the CEO of American Express. The NFL knows its Super Bowl clientele and also knows that raising ticket prices will not diminish demand because the consumers have abnormally deep pockets. And if for some reason the average consumer wants to attend the game? The NFL also knows that the Super Bowl commodity is such a premium product that consumers will pay outside their price range just for a chance to attend.
L.A. Times: Super Bowl tickets reach $1,000
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