Fans of the eight remaining teams in the NFL playoffs should feel happy to still have football to be talking about. They also are likely starting to make Super Bowl plans, and anyone who has tried to attend the event as a regular fan knows, that can be a major hassle.
Buying tickets ahead of time, booking hotel rooms and rental cars…only to see your team lose in the final moments of a championship game. Suddenly, the scramble to sell tickets you aren’t using begins, or for whatever reason, you decide to eat the massive amount of money you’ve already invested.
Enter On Locations Experience, who are here to solve that very problem for NFL fans. According to ESPN.com, this venture (partly owned by the NFL owners’ venture fund) guarantees fans tickets to the game should their favorite team make to the Super Bowl.
Yes, the novel concept of tickets being made available contingent on your team making it is actually a reality this year.
All one needs to do is put down a $1,000 deposit per ticket and a credit card to be charged at a later date. Should your team win the NFC or AFC Championship game, said credit card is charged for the remaining amount of the package.
Need, meet solution!
“We have these fans now who might be buying tickets just in case their team wins, and if not they have to start to think about selling it,” On Location Experiences CEO John Collins said, via ESPN.com. “We’ve created a no-risk situation.”
This doesn’t mean ticket packages will come cheap though, because this is the Super Bowl and packages for the common fan aren’t exactly plentiful or affordable.
Just how much will a fan have to drop on the packages being offered from On Location Experiences? Try in the neighborhood of $6,000 per person for a ticket and “low-end” tailgate pacrty, per ESPN’s reporting:
The company is selling four packages. The cheapest comes with an upper-level ticket and a lower-end tailgate party and starts at $5,949. The top package starts at $12,749, includes a prime lower-bowl ticket, a top-shelf tailgate party and access to the field for postgame. Hotels and access to the parties at Club Nomadic — a traveling series stopping in Houston for the Super Bowl with performances by the Chainsmokers, Bruno Mars and Taylor Swift — are sold separately.
No doubt the Super Bowl experience isn’t going to come cheap, and it wouldn’t come cheap going at it on your own either. After all, the average price of a ticket on game day for Super Bowl L in Santa Clara last year ran around the $9,000 mark. The cheapest? Around $3,000 per ticket.
However, this concept offers fans a lot of security and cuts out the secondary ticket brokers for a large swath of tickets early on in the market.
Fans will know that they actually have a ticket to the game, and after fiascoes with fraudulent tickets in both Dallas and Phoenix within the last decade, this is a smart move for the league to make.
What would be really nice is to see the nearly $6,000 get you the full package of ticket, tailgate, and hotel. Simply put, forking over that kind of money and then having to still find a hotel is a major stumbling block.
But this is clearly a step in the right direction for the average fan out there. Just how popular will this idea be? It may take some time, but we’re guessing the security of not being out a full $6,000 on tickets alone is a feature most will enjoy.
[ESPN]
