News Archive

Cold cash lands hot ticket; Contacts, luck may also come into play

2/8/2005

Not a problem. Really. The nation's hottest sports ticket is actually pretty easy to come by if you've got one of two things: Cash or connections.

Absent those, you'll need luck. Not an impossible amount of luck, but a fair amount. And patience, of course.

Did we mention cash or connections?

The one thing you can't do is call up the box office and order tickets for the game on Feb. 5, 2006. There is no box office. The National Football League keeps tight control of tickets to its championship game and distributes them according to a strict formula.

The two conference championship teams playing in the Super Bowl each get 17.5 percent of the tickets. The host city's team, the Detroit Lions in our case, gets 5 percent of the tickets. Another 35 percent go to all the other teams in the league. And the NFL retains about 25 percent to give to its sponsors, VIPs, and for handing out at promotional events.

So how can you, an ordinary fan, score tickets? The game may be a year away, but you can start today by entering the ...

NFL FAN LOTTERY

Each year the league holds a lottery to award about 1,000 pairs of tickets to ordinary fans around the country. You must enter between now and June 1. The lottery is held around Labor Day. To enter, send requests to Super Bowl Random Drawing, P.O. Box 49140, Strongsville, OH 44149-0140.

The odds? About 30,000 fans enter the lottery, so your chances of winning run about 1 in 30.

By the way, just because you win the NFL lottery doesn't mean your tickets will be free. You'll still have to pay the face value. For the 2005 game in Jacksonville, that was $500 and $600.

OK, so you don't win the NFL lottery. There's always ...

TEAM LOTTERIES

The NFL says virtually all teams set aside some portion of their allotment for their own season-ticket holders. The odds aren't very good here, either, because the teams also give a lot of their tickets to their players, sponsors, VIPs and so forth.

As the host city next year, the Lions will get to distribute about 3,300 tickets. Some will probably go to fans in a lottery, although we won't know details for a while. But a lot will wind up with all the sponsors and civic and corporate leaders the Lions want to please.

Realistically, you probably won't win tickets in a team lottery, either. So you better ...

HAVE CONNECTIONS

The NFL provides tickets to major advertisers and sponsors of the big game_like the car companies. They give the tickets to key executives, sales representatives, or others they want to keep happy.

Cadillac, for example, has been the official car of the Super Bowl. So General Motors Corp. treats a few hundred of its top-producing dealers to the game. It's part of Cadillac's annual two-day dealers meeting, held each year in the host city.

"It's hard to imagine this when you hear about it, but it is a business meeting," says Jay Spenchian, head of marketing for Cadillac. "You spend a couple months preparing for it. By the time Sunday rolls around, most of us are dead on our feet and so exhausted we're dragging ourselves to the game."

Odds are, though, that you're not a VIP. That means you'll have to buy your tickets from ...

TICKET BROKERS

Ticket brokers are scalpers, but more professional and upmarket. The best cater to a roster of corporate clients, supplying tickets to cultural and sporting events.

The National Association of Ticket Brokers (www.natb.org) lists its members on its Web site, and urges consumers to deal only with one of those. The NATB lists four members in metro Detroit.

But be warned: Brokers mark up their tickets to whatever the market will bear. Over the past couple of weeks, brokers were quoting prices in the $2, 000- to-$2,500 range for tickets to Super Bowl XXXIX in Jacksonville, Fla.

Where do brokers get their tickets? Jim Steeg, the former NFL executive who oversaw the Super Bowl for many years, says the majority come from the allotments given to the two teams playing in the game plus the host team's allotment. Steeg estimates that about 8,000 to 10,000 tickets to each game are scalped.

But he adds, "That's just a total guess, but if it was more than that the price would be lower. I think the reason the price is as high as it is, is because the inventory on the street is not as great as you think it is. It's the old law of supply and demand. If the supply was 60,000, the price would be down."

Here's where patience is required. The two participating teams are chosen only two weeks before the Super Bowl, so a big chunk of the tickets being scalped to next year's game in Detroit won't show up on the market until late January.

Lots of things influence the supply and price of tickets on this scalping market. A big one is the availability of hotel rooms in the host city.

"As people get their tickets and they're frustrated by their inability to find a place to stay, they'll sell their tickets," Steeg says.

It's also apparent that many Super Bowl tickets pass through several hands before actually being used on game day. Say a team gives a ticket to a season-ticket holder. That fan may sell it to a broker, who sells it to a company, which gives it to its best salesperson, who gives it to his or her best client, who ...

"There's a lot of trail on this," Steeg concedes.

One final word of caution: Ticket scams abound on the Internet. Using an NATB-member broker will help cut down on the heartbreak.

Got it?

See you at the game.

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