The Big Lead: Despite Lower Demand Match-Up, Super Bowl LIII Tickets Aren't Cheap...Here's Why
January 31, 2019
With the Patriots in their 5th Super Bowl this decade and the LA Rams still developing a fan base, most ticket market observers believed that prices for Super Bowl tickets would be cheaper than recent years. According to data from ticket market search engine TicketIQ, however, prices for Super Bowl LIII tickets remain high, with the average price for tickets for the Patriots and Rams matchup still hovering above $6,000 with the cheapest ticket going for around $2,750. For the first five Patriots Super Bowls, ticket prices followed a script in which prices fall in the second week which conditioned fans to play the waiting game. Since 2015, however, Super Bowl tickets appear to be following a different script–one in which prices rise in the week leading up to the big game.
For Patriots fans wondering why prices are so much higher than the good old days, the answer lies in the 2015 Super Bowl market blow-up, which was driven by many speculative broker bets that prices for Super Bowl tickets would drop over the course of the two weeks leading up to the game—as they had done for most of the previous 10 years.