Wanted: Super Bowl tickets

No Bucs? No problem. One fan who ran an ad seeking seats offers $2,000 for a pair.

By CHRISTOPHER GOFFARD

© St. Petersburg Times, published January 3, 2001

TAMPA -- Despite the Bucs having flubbed their chances of playing in Super Bowl XXXV at their home stadium later this month, local fan Keith Newman is willing to pay to see the big game. How much? Try $2,000 a pair.

"It's just the aura of going to see the Super Bowl," said Newman, 49, a certified public accountant who lives in St. Pete Beach. "It's my girlfriend's 40th birthday. I plan to take her to the Super Bowl with or without the Bucs."

The face value of tickets is $325, or $400 for club seats. But some people taking out ads in local papers, like Newman, are offering far greater sums.

The NFL figures about 10 percent of Super Bowl spectators will get there through unofficial -- sometimes illegal -- channels.

In response to his ad, Newman said, a woman called offering to sell her tickets. A Bucs fan, she no longer cared to attend after the team's loss on Sunday killed its chances for a Super Bowl appearance.

Added Newman: "I figured I might as well go, since it's so close. You've got to do everything once."

For those choosing to find seats through ticket brokers, $1,000 a ticket might be a steal.

"You'd be pretty hard-pressed to find someone who could get in for less than $1,700," said Dan Nichols, a manager at a Chicago-based ticket broker that is also advertising in local newspapers. High-end seats can sell for up to $5,000, he said.

He added that "innumerable" factors can affect prices between now and game day, especially who the teams are and how badly their fans want to see them.

Newer teams like the Tennessee Titans have yet to build the kind of vast fan base enjoyed by, say, the New York Giants. If the Oakland Raiders made it to the Super Bowl, their fans, while dedicated, might balk at having to fly across the country.

While scalping laws vary from place to place -- in Florida, it is illegal to sell tickets for more than $1 above the ticket price -- out-of-state brokers regularly buy scores of tickets and mark them up for resale.

Most of the people advertising to buy tickets locally declined to talk to a reporter about their efforts, or didn't return phone calls.

It's a practice that, while often legal, the National Football League frowns on. Jim Steeg, the NFL's vice president of special events, includes such brokers in the list of "scalpers" that will control an expected 10 percent to 12 percent of the 71,000 Super Bowl XXXV seats.

"The thing that scares me about the scalping, more than anything else, is not knowing if the ticket's real or not," Steeg said. "They may sell you something that purports to be a ticket that really isn't a ticket. It's a piece of cardboard with a Super Bowl logo on it."

Steeg said the league will work with local law enforcement to combat illegal scalping at the game.

- Christopher Goffard can be reached at (813) 226-3337 or goffard@sptimes.com.

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