If you have designs on attending Super Bowl XLVIII in East Rutherford, NJ, in February, forget about saving your pennies and skip right to taking out a second mortgage. Prices for the most coveted tickets could more than double, according to the Wall Street Journal.
"According to three league officials familiar with the plan, club-level seats in the mezzanine with access to indoor restaurants are likely to cost about $2,600 -- a mammoth hike from last year's game in New Orleans, where the top tickets went for $1,250," the Journal's Matthew Futterman wrote Tuesday. "The next-cheapest tranche of seats (those in the lower bowl) would cost about $1,500, the executives said, up from $950 for the second-tier seats sold in New Orleans."
For some perspective, tickets were $325 in 2001 and a whopping $6 in 1967, the first Super Bowl.
A committee of NFL owners are expected to approve the plan this week.
NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy told the Journal that the league is considering the plan because it's interested in capturing some of the value fans and brokers find in the secondary markets.
"We are looking to close the gap between the face value of the ticket and the true value of a ticket to what has become the premier sports and entertainment event," he said.
It's not all bad news, though. The NFL is dropping the prices for its cheapest tickets to $500 (it was $600 in 2013). All told, some 39 percent of the 77,500 seats will cost less than $1,000.
