Why the Super Bowl is always so expensive

By Julian Torres, CNN

(CNN) — The Super Bowl isn’t a regular football game – and its ticket prices reflect that.

With a limited supply and a voracious demand, the Super Bowl functions more like a luxury good, and the forces keeping it that way are unlikely to change anytime soon.

This year’s Super Bowl at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California is no exception. The cheapest seat available on TickPick, a secondary reseller, as of Friday afternoon was over $3,800, with the average ticket costing more than $6,200

Today the Super Bowl is the ultimate showcase of exclusivity – and you can expect it to stay that way. Two tickets to the first Super Bowl in 1967 would have cost a couple of tanks of gasoline today, or about $118.20 in inflation-adjusted dollars. Now, it’s comparable to trading in a 2019 Subaru Outback, according to an analysis by Edmunds.

Scarcity by design

For the regular fan, the Super Bowl can be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that’s less about the game and more about the experience.

“For lots of folks, it doesn’t matter who’s in the game because the Super Bowl is not just a sports phenomenon; it’s a cultural phenomenon,” said Victor Matheson, a sports economist at College of the Holy Cross.

And with stadiums reaching their seating capacity limits, the first thing to give is the price.

“The number of actual seats the NFL can sell for a Super Bowl has basically stayed the same, which puts massive pressure on (the price),” Matheson said. “Stadiums simply can’t get any bigger.”

Tickets are hard to come by not just from the extraordinary demand but also because of how they’re distributed. The NFL has the legal authority to control where every single Super Bowl ticket goes. At Super Bowl XLVIII in 2014, 99% of the tickets were already allocated before being offered to the public.

Of those predetermined tickets, the NFL allotted 35% to the two teams that played in the Super Bowl to share and 5% to the team hosting the event. The other 29 NFL teams received a combined 35%, and the final 25% went to NFL-connected individuals and entities including corporations, broadcast networks, media outlets, sponsors and the Super Bowl host committee.

Players and team staff get first access to buy tickets; then many NFL teams give a share to their sponsors as a reward. Whatever is left trickles down to the public.

For fans, that means tickets available at face value are scarce. These remaining tickets are generally distributed through highly competitive NFL-sponsored lotteries, which can require being a season ticket holder to even enter.

Fans lucky enough to win those lotteries sometimes then resell their tickets for multiples of the original price.

CNN has reached out to the NFL for comment.

Why prices keep rising

Ticket scarcity pushes many buyers into the pricey secondary market, resulting in Super Bowl crowds wealthier than average Americans.

An economic impact report from Louisiana State University after last year’s Super Bowl in New Orleans confirmed that nearly one in four attendees reported household incomes above $500,000, and the majority earned between $200,000 and $500,000.

For comparison, less than 10% reported household incomes at or below the 2024 US median of $83,730.

Prices could always drop ahead of kickoff, according to SeatGeek. Any discounts that show up are usually snatched up quickly.

But the rising ticket prices underscore that wealthier buyers are willing to shell out more and more to guarantee a seat. That means ticket prices probably haven’t hit a ceiling yet.

Between the limited seats and the high incomes of Super Bowl attendees, Matheson said, “you’re likely to see these ticket prices continue to skyrocket.”

CNN’s Chris Isidore contributed reporting.

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