If you haven’t been saving up for the Super Bowl trip of your lifetime — your highly unlikely to be in attendance for Seattle-New England.
According to Darren Rovell of ESPN, this Super Bowl could be the most expensive in history. As of 11 a.m. ET Thursday, the cheapest ticket to see the New England Patriots take on the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday was $8,070.
Rovell says ticket brokers are raising the stakes on their own.
The answer lies in what happens behind the scenes with ticket brokers, many of whom promise the tickets in advance figuring they’ll be able to make a healthy profit as the event draws closer.
For the past few years, the Super Bowl has become a lucrative business for ticket brokers, and it’s fairly easy to cash in.
On the open market, a broker typically lists tickets in a generic section of the stadium and doesn’t disclose exactly where the seats are until the Wednesday before the game.
By then sites such as StubHub and Vivid Seats require the brokers to choose exact seat locations or cancel the sale.
The idea for the brokers is to take money from ticket buyers when the tickets are at a higher price after the conference title games, then actually buy the tickets days later as the prices start to come down. The ease of the scheme caused more and more brokers to get in the game.
“Everyone in the business had seen that shorting had been the right move,” said a broker who requested anonymity because his company is still short tickets. “For the last five years it had been that way. Everyone was sort of sketched out by Packers. That the ticket could cost a lot of money closer to the game. So the Seahawks win and everyone is undercutting each other just to be able to offer the lowest-price ticket available.”