The secondary market for Super Bowl XLVIII is ending up as the third straight declining market for the game, despite initial high hopes of staging the event in the nation’s largest metro area. StubHub officials said the company’s median sale price for the game was $2,300, down 6% from a similar point before last year’s Ravens-49ers game in New Orleans, down 16% from Giants-Patriots in Indianapolis in ’12, and down 36% from Packers-Steelers in Arlington in ’11. Despite higher ticket face values, an improved weather forecast for the outdoor game at MetLife Stadium Sunday and plenty of available hotel inventory in metro N.Y., ticket resales over the past two weeks took a major tumble from initial pricing that had been tracking at record levels. “We’ve seen this dynamic play out before. Prices start really high and then inventory climbs and there’s a fall on price,” said Goviva President Robert Tuchman. “But some of this may be distance, too. You can’t just necessarily drive here on a whim from Denver or Seattle.” Ticket aggregator SeatGeek Thursday showed more than 11,000 unique tickets still listed on resale markets, roughly double the available inventory seen at a comparable point before last year’s Super Bowl. Because of that, low-end, get-in pricing was tracking at around $1,200 per ticket, even with the higher face values, and could fall below $1,000 by gametime. Geographic purchase patterns across several major resale markets has skewed in favor of Washington state-based buying, suggesting Sunday’s crowd at MetLife Stadium will lean toward the Seahawks (Eric Fisher, Staff Writer). StubHub's cheapest ticket Thursday was $1,515, which is "$165 lower" than Wednesday (NJ.com, 1/30).
TIME OF THE SEASON: The WALL STREET JOURNAL's Jared Diamond reports weather is "continuing to have an effect on the price of secondary-market tickets for Sunday's game." Improved forecasts have "coincided with increased demand for game tickets, calming initial fears that interest in attending the first cold-weather Super Bowl had plummeted." SeatGeek data shows that in the 10 days between the AFC and NFC conference championship games and Wednesday, the "average ticket on the secondary sales market sold for $2,595," which is "up from $2,388 during the same span leading up to last year's Super Bowl" at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. It "remains to be seen whether prices for this year's Super Bowl will stay ahead of last season's pace." The "unusual trajectory of how tickets have sold this year has made one thing clear: Not even the Super Bowl is immune to the whims of Mother Nature" (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 1/31).
