\n Today the Super Bowl is the ultimate showcase of exclusivity \u2013 and you can expect it to stay that way. Two tickets to the first Super Bowl in 1967 would have cost a couple of tanks of gasoline today, or about $118.20 in inflation-adjusted dollars. Now, it\u2019s comparable to trading in a 2019 Subaru Outback, according to an analysis by Edmunds<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n For the regular fan, the Super Bowl can be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that\u2019s less about the game and more about the experience.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cFor lots of folks, it doesn\u2019t matter who\u2019s in the game because the Super Bowl is not just a sports phenomenon; it\u2019s a cultural phenomenon,\u201d said Victor Matheson, a sports economist at College of the Holy Cross.\n <\/p>\n \n And with stadiums reaching their seating capacity limits, the first thing to give is the price.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe number of actual seats the NFL can sell for a Super Bowl has basically stayed the same, which puts massive pressure on (the price),\u201d Matheson said. \u201cStadiums simply can\u2019t get any bigger.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Tickets are hard to come by not just from the extraordinary demand but also because of how they\u2019re distributed. The NFL has the legal<\/a> authority to control where every single Super Bowl ticket goes. At Super Bowl XLVIII in 2014, 99% of the tickets were already allocated before being offered to the public.\n <\/p>\n \n Of those predetermined tickets, the NFL allotted 35% to the two teams that played in the Super Bowl to share and 5% to the team hosting the event. The other 29 NFL teams received a combined 35%, and the final 25% went to NFL-connected individuals and entities including corporations, broadcast networks, media outlets, sponsors and the Super Bowl host committee.\n <\/p>\n \n Players and team staff get first access to buy tickets; then many NFL teams give a share to their sponsors as a reward. Whatever is left trickles down to the public.\n <\/p>\n \n For fans, that means tickets available at face value are scarce. These remaining tickets are generally distributed through highly competitive NFL-sponsored lotteries, which can require being a season ticket holder to even enter.\n <\/p>\n \n Fans lucky enough to win those lotteries sometimes then resell their tickets for multiples of the original price.\n <\/p>\n \n CNN has reached out to the NFL for comment.\n <\/p>\n \n Ticket scarcity pushes many buyers into the pricey secondary market, resulting in Super Bowl crowds wealthier than average Americans.\n <\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/gettyimages-2198244861.jpg\")
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