Buyers may wait to go for brokers
Michael J. Lipman won’t stop running tomorrow until Super Bowl XLI kicks off.
“Sunday is always an interesting day,” said Lipman, chief executive of Tickets of America, a Miami company that will continue to broker Super Bowl deals until game time on Sunday. “In the last several Super Bowls, prices shot up the day of the game, but this year, it’s been difficult to predict because there were such high ticket prices right off the bat.”
Brokers on Friday predicted that the average price of resold Super Bowl XLI tickets (with face values of $600 and $700) would remain above $4,000, easily breaking the $3,000 average resale record set last year in Detroit. Though seats were available for $1,800 on Friday, brokers and resellers say the average was pushed up by strong demand for better seats from Super Bowl-starved fans in Chicago and Indianapolis.
Tickets still on the resale market are in the hands of brokers and online resellers in Miami who’ve set up shop a short drive from Dolphin Stadium. Lipman is operating out of his Miami headquarters building and a satellite location at Shula’s On The Beach, a Fort Lauderdale steakhouse. He’ll also dispatch representatives to deliver tickets to customers as they approach the stadium.
Based on the number of Super Bowl tickets still available Friday, there were plenty of deals to be done by game time. Tickets of America’s website had about 100 tickets available. StubHub.com listed more than 800 tickets and Ticketsnow.com had more than 1,800 tickets. TicketsNow.com also offered an eight-passenger private jet with round-trip service from New York to Miami for $24,000.
StubHub.com’s data showed that the average ticket price on Friday fell to $4,170, down from $4,498 on Wednesday. The highest priced tickets on the website continued to hover between $9,000 and $10,000. But TicketsNow.com had several seats priced at $1,800 -- less than the $2,415 asking price for a VIP ticket to Playboy’s annual Super Bowl party.
As for fans who didn’t make it to Miami, but still have money burning a hole in their pockets? Take heart. A ticket for a primo seat at the sold-out NBA All-Star game at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas on Feb. 18 can be had online for just $6,500.
