The Fan Is Put Near the Bottom of Priority List for Super Bowl

The last word we get here--and, certainly, we don’t hold out on you--is the Super Bowl game at Tampa in January is going to cost the populace $150 a ticket.

This is no doubt due to the Persian Gulf crisis. The National Football League is paying more at the pump for sunflower seeds.

When the Super Bowl was staged at Pasadena in 1987, the cost of seats ran $75.

The price then would escalate to $100, followed by $125. Now we are expecting the NFL to explain:

“Our new tab of $150 is a steal, considering some people paid $1,000 to see Buster Douglas and Evander Holyfield. That lasted seven minutes. At the Super Bowl, the consumer is guaranteed 60 minutes.”

Charging $150 for each of the 73,000 seats at Tampa, the league is showing restraint. It could get $250, if not $500.

You must understand that when a guy is promoting, he doesn’t ask how much an event is worth, how much is ethically and morally right. What he asks is how much he can get for it.

Otherwise, how would the owner of the basketball Lakers come to ask $450 for a floor seat and $90 for a decent seat in the stands?

He always is encouraged here to keep pushing the figure higher, testing the pain tolerance of those stupid enough to pay.

The way the NFL analyzes the Super Bowl, it has several compelling reasons for boosting the price. First, it calculates what people are going to spend for travel, housing and entertainment, concluding that in the context of what is going down the sewer, a ticket price of $150 is the same as $125.

Second, the league takes the position that when it increases the price, it is hurting mainly the scalper, who is asked to pay more for tickets he is going to hawk for maybe $500 to $1,500.

Such muscling on the part of the league isn’t fair to the scalper, whose overhead goes on. He has a son to send to Brown and a wife who shops at Chanel’s.

And cutting into his take weakens the structure of a vital American industry.

If there is a final reason for raising Super Bowl tickets to $150, it would be to impress players with their unimportance to the game.

Players have been receiving the same cut for years. Ticket prices have risen. Television revenues have risen. Fringe monies, thanks to creative packaging, have risen. The league even rents tents on the parking lot of the Super Bowl site for corporate entertainment.

The way we picture Super Bowl XXV, Buffalo will be matched against the New York Giants amid a major argument over whether the game can be labeled an all-New York proposition.

Teams from the same state have yet to play each other in the Super Bowl.

So, the beef will be lodged that the Giants aren’t from New York at all, but from the garden state of New Jersey. People from New Jersey will point out: “Look, if the Giants are from New York, why did the mayor of their town refuse to go to the Super Bowl when the Giants played Denver in ‘87?”

The game was played in the Rose Bowl. Ed Koch went to Poland.

There were two reasons for his choosing Poland. First, exploring the beauties of Bialystok, he could avoid the bloodletting administered Denver.

And second, he never forgave the Giants, and probably hasn’t to this day, for dumping New York. What’s more, they inspired the Jets to dump New York, leaving the largest city in America without an NFL team.

Koch has departed office, meaning his successor might have to decide whether he should go to Tampa or retrace Koch’s steps in Bialystok.

Pondering the dilemma, will the mayor of Buffalo then announce: “If that guy is going to Poland, I’m going to Bulgaria”?

You can see the problems that are looming for Super Bowl XXV, in addition to the creaming of clients $150 for tickets.