What you'll pay to get a ticket to Super Bowl XLIV--if you still want one!

What is the most "valuable" part of next Sunday's Super Bowl?

If you could control the financial activity of one of the following items, which would it be?  

• Hotdogs and beer revenues at the event?
• Air fares to and from the game?
• CBS's revenue for advertising?
• Game-related lodging sales in Miami for the weekend?
• Ticket sales?
• Parking?

If you chose anything but ticket sales you'd be making a critical mistake!  

The most money to be made will not be by CBS--it'll be the ticket holders!

 Most people suck air when they find out the cost of a 30-second commercial on television during the game--but that's not where all of the financial value resides for the event.  When one considers all of the economic transactions associated with the Super Bowl, much of the money isn't going to be made just by selling advertising, it's also going to be made by selling--maybe a better word here would be scalping--tickets!  

Let's put this in a little context:  CBS's predicted to make about $200M by selling television advertising next week.  I estimate that from solely ticket sales transactions [the operative word here is "transactions"] an enormous amount of money will change hands.  If you don’t know exactly how that’s possible, let me explain...

How can a person get tickets to the Super Bowl?

First, there are some pretty obvious--and straightforward--ways to get Super Bowl tickets:  You could be one of the following...

• A football player who is on the game-day field and will be playing;
• A corporate sponsor of the NFL;
• An NFL team owner;
• An NFL player who's on a team that isn't playing in the Super Bowl; or
• A very, very lucky-but-ordinary fan that wins in the NFL-sponsored 1% of the ticket sales lottery!  

If you had the good fortune to be a person on this list, you'd be lucky enough to get one or more tickets--either for $500 or free!  

Here's the breakdown and general arrangements on how this all happens from a site called TeamOneTickets:

The majority of Super Bowl tickets--about 75%—are distributed to the NFL teams with each of the participating teams splitting approximately 35% of all Super Bowl tickets. All teams not playing in the Super Bowl will receive just over 1%, and the team hosting the Super Bowl receives about 9% of the Super Bowl tickets. The remaining 25% of SuperBowl tickets are controlled by the NFL and are distributed primarily to NFL affiliated companies, the network broadcasting the Super Bowl, corporate sponsors, media, VIPs, charities, fans and the Host Committee to package with sponsorships.

And then there are people who make money on Super Bowl tickets!  

Obviously, it isn't easy to get a ticket to the Super Bowl; this is because their distribution is tightly controlled.  The NFL sells only 1% of the total number of tickets directly to fans--and that's on a lottery basis, beginning as early as a year in advance of the game!  The face price of those tickets is $500.  To get into that "game" one must follow carefully laid-out and strictly enforced rules to be eligible! 

According to Douglas Hanks of the Miami Herald, the distribution of the rest of the tickets is a different story:

The National Football League sends 75 percent of Super Bowl tickets to the league's 32 teams, which then distribute them to players, coaches, executives and corporate sponsors. The NFL's share of tickets also gets spread out to sponsors, charities, media organizations, local organizers and fans who enter lotteries.

From there, the tickets begin changing hands. Even though NFL rules bar team employees from selling theirs for more than face value, many do, Lipman said. He said he and his staff court financial advisors and agents representing players as potential sources for Super Bowl tickets.

"It really is a relationship game,'' he said.

For teams that don't make it to the Super Bowl, their players can buy two tickets at face value. For the two Super Bowl teams, their players can buy up to 15. Even so, Lipman said sponsors and other companies with ties to the league are the best sources for tickets -- particularly this year as companies pull back money on sports deals signed before the economy went sour. "Corporations are selling more tickets these days than buying them,'' he said.

If they're mostly free or simply sold [originally] at face value--how's the money made?

If all of the tickets are free--or mostly free for as low as $500, as in the small percent sold to fans on a lottery basis for $500 each--where's the money coming from?  Well, here's what happens:  Not everybody who gets a ticket for even $500 elects to use that ticket to get into the event; many people and corporations decide to put those tickets on the open market and benefit from the value that comes from holding a scarce resource.  Eventually, many of these tickets find their way to office ticket sellers and--pay attention to my terms here--re-sellers!  

You don't have a ticket, but still want one?  

If you say “yes,” here's what you'd pay today, February 1, 2009, on the open market:

• High-priced, suite-site tickets range from $295,000 to $118,000 per person.  On the ticket sales site I checked this morning, the top fifty seats available would sell in aggregate for $10,342,938, or an average price tag of $206,859 apiece. 
• Median priced tickets are in the range of $2,600 to $3,000 for mid-distance side-view seats.
• Low-end ticket prices—which really translates to high-up [and mostly “corner”] seats [some with a mild threat of being clipped by the Goodyear blimp as it flies over!] run as low as $1700 per. 
• If you can't afford--or justify paying--those kinds of prices, there's also the official tail-gate parties that run from $265 to $1,062 you can be a part of.   [I suppose you could listen to the stadium crowd noises from outside if you do this, but it wouldn't be the same as actually being there!] 

So what's the aggregate economic value of all of the tickets at the Super Bowl, exercised for admission or re-sold?  Here's my best estimate:  76,500 seats at Sun Life Stadium, multiplied by an average ticket price of, say $3,000 , bringing the total economic value of tickets for the event to a grand total of $230M!  That's somewhat more than the value of all the advertising fees that CBS will charge!

So, clearly, there’s a lot of dough up for grabs here.  If you still want admission, you'd better move quickly…they’re not making more and what they did make is going fast!  Obviously, with ticket sales the economic value will be spread over a large number of individuals; in the case of CBS's gain, it all accrues to one entity [i.e., CBS].  But just the same, the amount of money pertaining to tickets is a huge deal!  

Tomorrow's blog:  What about television advertising for Super Bowl XLIV!

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