Super Bowl Ticket Prices Down, May Drop Even More

Looking for a ticket to Super Bowl 51 in Houston on Feb. 5?

Don't buy it now if you want to get the best price.

The average price for tickets to the matchup between the Atlanta Falcons and New England Patriots is already down nine percent from last year's game, according to ticket reseller StubHub. And they are expected to drop even more in the days leading up to the game.

"I wouldn't be surprised if the average ticket price drops another $500-600 as the week goes," said Glenn Lehrman StubHub's global head of communications.

The average price for a ticket at StubHub on Friday was $4,945 with the cheapest ticket going for $2,499 and the most expensive one sold to date going for a whopping $15,432.

Prices at Vivid Seats, another ticket reseller, were similar with an average price of $4,510 and the least expensive ticket going for $2,795, and TicketCity had an average price of $4,375.

When tickets first hit the market they were much more expensive mostly because many thought the Dallas Cowboys would be in the big game.

Things changed quickly when they were eliminated by the Green Bay Packers in the NFC divisional round, dropping ticket prices by close to a third.

"Tickets initially were pretty expensively priced because there was the anticipation that the Cowboys might be in the Super Bowl. So that kept the ticket prices high," Lehrman said.

"And now usually in the first week (after teams are set) you see the tickets purchased by traveling fans, and once they've purchased the remaining inventory is usually left to the host city.

"And those tickets will come down in price just because local fans probably aren't going to pay that much of a premium to see a team that they really don't have a rooting interest for."

Fans in Texas have bought 38 percent of the tickets at StubHub so far, and not surprisingly, fans from Georgia (14 percent) and Massachusetts (13 percent) are second and third.

Lehrman said they expected buyers from Massachusetts to far outweigh those from Georgia, but that hasn't been the case so far.

While the top three states for tickets sales aren't surprising, there's plenty of interest in tickets to the game from unexpected areas.

"We're seeing more international sales this year than we've ever seen before," Lehrman said. "So 10 percent of the sales for this year's game have come from outside of the U.S.

"As you'd expect Canada is the most, but Mexico represents almost 3½ percent of people who have bought tickets, Canada is around 4 and then there are about 13 other countries that have bought tickets to this game including Hong Kong and the U.K. and South America. So it really speaks to the globalization of the sport that people are traveling from so far to see it."