Fans hoping to score tickets to Sunday’s NFC Championship Game between the Eagles and the San Francisco 49’er are largely out of luck.
Tickets were available via Ticketmaster Tuesday morning but were gone within a few minutes. Most fans who had logged onto the site were informed virtually there were no tickets available at the appointed hour.
“A joke.” That’s how Horsham resident and Eagles fan Sue Wilson described the process.
“I signed on and it said ‘Tickets for this event are not available until 10 o’clock,’” she recalled, and I asked, ‘Do you want to go into a waiting room?’
But at the stroke of ten, Wilson was informed no tickets were available. Most of them had been scooped up, likely by bots and would up in the hands of resale agents or scalpers (which many consider one and the same).
The process left Wilson frustrated. “It’s no longer possible for the normal person to log onto the site (and get tickets),” she said.
As of Wednesday morning, the best option for fans determined to be at Lincoln Financial Field for Sunday’s game (3 p.m. kickoff) was likely the resale market. But they should be prepared to part with a hefty sum of cash.
The cheapest ticket on StubHub on Wednesday listed for $626, a price that did not include a service charge that was reportedly double what it was during the regular season. The asking price for the most expensive ticket on the StubHub site was $5,396.
Seat Geek, another resale outlet, listed tickets from $501 to $8,710 each, before the service charge.
On Thursday afternoon Gametime.com advertised seats for the Eagles-49er’s game for $573 and standing-room tickets for $461. By contrast, tickets for the AFC Championship Game in Kansas City between the Chiefs and the Cincinnati Bengals were available on the same site for “just” $247.
And there are tickets available outside the normal resale outlets. In the course of researching this story several people reach out to this writer with tickets available. (Full disclosure; he will be watching Sunday’s game from the comfort of his brother in-law’s den).
And some fans are willing to pay any price.
“A friend of my sister in-law has a club box,” Wilson said. “They were offered $77,000 for it for Sunday’s game. You’re talking a hunk of change.
“I would never pay that for any entertainment experience.”
All this will pale in comparison to what will ensue if the Eagles win on Sunday and earn a place in the Super Bowl, which is scheduled for February 12 in Glendale, Arizona. Over the course of almost six decades (the first Super Bowl was played in January of 1967, although it wasn’t called the Super Bowl then) the game has become America’s biggest one-day sporting spectacle.
The numbers surrounding Super Bowl LVII (it’s the NFL’s idea to use Roman numerals) are staggering. According to Betway, some 109.9 million people will watch the game on Fox. It estimates that a 30-second commercial on the telecast will cost an advertiser $7 million.
There will be lots and lots of commercials and with the extra timeouts inserted into the telecast– specifically to allow for more commercials, plus with the lengthy halftime show the game itself will likely drag on interminably.
But fans watching on TV, whether at home or in a bar or a restaurant with friends may be the lucky ones, considering the out-of-pocket cost of attending the game in person.
The average cost of a ticket to the upcoming Super Bowl is $9,341, according to Betway. Add to that the cost of lodging, food, entertainment, plus the cost of traveling to Arizona and it becomes clear that being on site for the game requires a substantial investment.
But diehard Eagles fans are prepared to make that investment and more. Wilson’s brother, an Eagles season ticketholder, was in Minneapolis when the Eagles won the Super Bowl in February of 2018.
“It was a lifetime experience,” Wilson recalls. “Being a season ticketholder, he got a chance to buy tickets and he did.”
The cost of that Super Bowl ticket that year? $12,000.
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