Super Bowl ticket prices are sliding as brokers wait on Los Angeles Rams fans to show up
LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles Rams fans and Super Bowl ticket buyers who live in close proximity to the surrounding area appear to be taking their sweet time.
So much so that Thursday morning saw the average ticket price of Super Bowl LVI fall below the Super Bowl LV average for the first time since Sunday’s matchup was set between the Rams and Cincinnati Bengals. Thursday also featured a somewhat surprising slide in “get in” prices for the cheapest seats, hitting $3,400 all-in per seat on a TickPick listing Thursday night. TicketIQ had similar seats available in the $3,500 all-in per seat range.
That’s a far cry from the bottom that secondary brokers were predicting earlier in the week, when some thought the $5,000 mark would be where “get in” seats would settle before starting to climb as the game drew nearer. Instead, it’s been the opposite the last two days, with inventory climbing across multiple platforms and seats continuing to trickle downward. That’s the opposite of essentially every Super Bowl since 2015, which have largely seen inventory management from brokers drive prices higher as Super Bowl Sunday approached.
But Akshay Khanna, StubHub’s general manager of North America, said there’s a fairly simple reason for the reversal in the trend this year: It’s a home game for Rams fans and geographical residents who can drive to the game on Sunday, so they appear to be taking their time in purchasing tickets.
“The last couple of days, the get-in has dropped, as have median prices.” Khanna said. “It’s not that surprising. Every year seems to have a slightly different sales cycle. … Really, what’s unique about this one is that home team aspect — the fact that the Rams play here in Los Angeles, that their fans tend to live here in Los Angeles. Typically, we’ve seen earlier buying cycles because fans have had to buy their tickets. They had to buy flights. They had to buy hotels. And in addition to that, they would buy their Super Bowl tickets, so that they would know they’re going to the game and weren’t just traveling in vain.
“This year, we have a bunch of fans who can literally wake up on Sunday morning without having worried about any kind of logistics and just show up to the game. So we do expect prices to start to increase if and when that buying base does start to really come in.”
The fans' proximity has showcased something unique about the last two Super Bowls, which have featured the Rams and Tampa Bay Buccaneers “hosting” games. As Khanna put it, teams basically hosting Super Bowls translates into plenty of decision-making time for their fans. And in this case with the Rams, it’s not only going to save their fans money on hotels and travel, but also some cash on tickets in return for their patience in the secondary ticket market. That doesn’t mean tickets won’t climb soon, however. At some point, the people taking the slow boat on a purchase are going to have to make a commitment. And if they all do it at once, prices could spike pretty quickly.
“Assuming that that trend [of patience] does hold — where we believe that these fans from Los Angeles and the Southern California region really start to come in on Friday, Saturday, into Sunday morning — [it means] this is a pretty good lull in prices that we’re seeing currently,” Khanna said.
