Why are Super Bowl tickets so expensive? It’s Vegas, baby! (plus other factors)

Blair Kerkhoff
·2 min read
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It cost $12 to watch the Chiefs play in the first Super Bowl, and $15 to watch them win their first one.

Those were the tickets’ face value for Super Bowls I and IV, played in 1967 and 1970 — different economic times.

The cheapest ticket for Super Bowl LVIII between the Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers, about 1 1/2 weeks before the Feb. 11 game, was $5,900 on StubHub as of Wednesday. The average ticket price is about $9,300, not including service fees.

At Overland Park-based Tickets for Less, the get-in price (cheapes ticket) is $8,499. Tickets for Less doesn’t have service fees. In 2020, for the first Chiefs-49ers Super Bowl, the average ticket price at this stage was $5,805, and last year, for the Chiefs-Eagles Super Bowl, it was $6,645.

According to Logitix, a ticketing technology company that has been tracking sales for this Super Bowl since tickets appeared on the secondary market, fans are paying a record amount for this year’s NFL championship game.

So much for Chiefs fatigue. It doesn’t seem to matter that this will be the Chiefs’ fourth Super Bowl appearance in five years.

The game’s location is a factor in this year’s steep ticket prices. Las Vegas, a destination city, is playing host to a Super Bowl for the first time, said Dustin Ray, senior vice president of business intelligence at Tickets for Less.

“Location is a driving factor, along with a brand new state-of-the-art stadium,” Ray said in an email to The Star. “There’s an affluent market in San Francisco that’s within reasonable driving distance of the game.”

But the Chiefs also bring a healthy appetite for ticket buying.

“There’s a Kansas City fan base which is used to hosting multiple rounds of playoff games but only had the Wild Card game this year, and they’re willing to travel,” Ray said.

In their three Super Bowl seasons starting in 2019, the Chiefs played two home playoff games. After beating the Miami Dolphins in the fourth-coldest NFL game on record — minus-4 at kickoff — the Chiefs won at Buffalo and Baltimore to reach the Super Bowl.

There could be a reward in waiting for ticket prices to shrink ... but also a risk.

“There will be some price discounting on low-quality locations last minute,” Ray said. “But we shouldn’t count on things dramatically changing from where they are today.”