I’m going to be in San Francisco later in the year, with the opportunity to see a 49ers game (Vs Atlanta Falcons) from the best I can find there appears to be no ‘normal’ tickets available. They’re on the ticketmaster site, but all are listed as reseller tickets. So is the entire stadium essentially sold out? and these are season ticket holders who know they won’t be able to make it? or are we talking semi-sanctioned scalpers? Or is there something else going on I’m missing? [Clueless Aussie asking]
The NFL has gotten into the secondary ticket market. Legal scalping if you want to call it that. You can buy tickets from season ticket holders who aren’t going to be using the tickets. The NFL does it through tickermaster.
There are also other sites where you can do the same thing like stubhub.
I don’t know about San Francisco but the New York Giants have been sold out for generations. Every seat is a season ticket. I know some people who don’t want to give up the seats but go to very few games especially when they are doing bad. If they don’t give them to friends at face value they sell them on these sites.
I do know about SF, and IIRC the last time the 49ers didn’t sell out a home game was in 1989…when the game had to be moved to Stanford Stadium because of some combination of “we’re still looking at the earthquake damage” and “we had to move Games 3 and 4 of the World Series because of the earthquake.”
This is (pretty much) the case at Lambeau Field (home of the Packers), as well. It was 100% season tickets (with a decades-long waiting list) until they renovated and expanded the stadium in 2003.
The Packers were able to get a temporary sales tax increase in Brown County for a few years, to help pay for the renovation, but part of that deal with the county was that a number of the new seats (~4000) would be held as single-game tickets, and would be sold exclusively to residents of Brown County, who did not hold season tickets.
I’m a Packers season ticket holder (the tickets have been in my family since the late 50s), and we go through one of the official / sanctioned ticket resellers to sell the tickets that we aren’t going to use.
My sister’s husband’s family have had 6 Steeler season tickets for generations. They initially were used for business purposes; taking clients to the game, etc. We were just talking about this season. A pair of seats are open for most home games and they were offered to me, but I declined (Michael “dog-killer” Vick).
When the Pittsburgh Maulers (USFL?) were a thing, they quickly snatched up 6 season tickets. A failed investment, but they thought it was worth the risk.
Single game tickets probably went on sale to the public a couple months ago and yes, I expect they sold out rather quickly. So your only option is to purchase from someone else. Be careful with ticketmaster and stubhub. The actual cost will be far greater than the price originally listed on the website after fees and taxes and whatever they can hit you with.
In practice the cheapest option would be to just show up and look for scalpers, but obviously that involves some (but in my experience, quite small) risk of not getting in at all and/or getting ripped off.
Thanks for the insight everyone. So, I’m technically buying tickets from a private season ticket holder.
If this secondary market is NFL sanctioned, then I’m presuming (hoping) that as long as I purchase through ‘official’ channels like ticketmaster or stubhub there are some protections in place? Is there any risk of fraud if I stick to those sources?
Yup, these sites are pretty rock solid. Read the term and conditions to be sure, but the vast majority of these sites are quite good. A handful will get into the speculation game and ended up screwing over a lot of people at the last Super Bowl so those should be avoided for punitive reasons, but for a regular season game you’re very secure.
But, NFL games are SERIOUSLY expensive on the secondary market. Be prepared. Games are great fun, especially if you make an event of it and get in on the tailgate, but in many of the bedrock cities (Chicago, New York, Boston, Washington, Pittsburgh, Dallas etc.) getting tickets will cost more than a weeks salary for most folks. Some of the 2nd or 3rd tier cities can be a lot more reasonable but San Francisco probably isn’t one of them…though with how bad the team could be this year and the general dislike for the new stadium you might be in luck!
Thanks again everyone. I just bought two tickets from stubhub. I’m not sure what face value is, but I got two inner bowl seats pretty much directly behind the goalposts for $250 (+ $50 in ‘fees & charges’ - You weren’t wrong there Barkis is Willin). I’m not sure if I want to know if that’s good or not. But going by comparables it seems decent. There only appears to have been a ~$20 difference per ticket between these and having seats up in the nosebleeds.
My seats in Lambeau are pretty good (22 yard line, halfway up the bowl), and they are nearly $100 each face value. I’d guess you didn’t get a bad deal.
If I am interpreting where your seats are a comparable seat for a Giants game would be $132 face value. But to have the privilege of being a season ticket holder you have to pay $5,000 per seat as a PSL (personal seat license). It appears that the Niners have a similar plan. For that section $125 per seat and a $6,000 Stadium Builders License.
To clarify: PSLs and the like are (usually) one-time payments, not annual things. I had to pay a license fee (something like $1400 per ticket) when Lambeau Field was renovated fifteen years ago; I haven’t had to pay anything like that before, or since.
Yes one time fees for season ticket holders. It was not popular with Jets and Giants fans. They had their tickets (in particular loyal Giant fans) handed down through generations. Then with the new stadium they were paying thousands of dollars to keep the tickets they always had. Sure the team financed the payments over time but that was just having a mortgage on the seat you get to sit in 8 times a year.
Shows you how much I know - I just went to NFL.com and searched for tickets for the 49ers-Falcons game, and there are still some available directly from the box office. Keep in mind nosebleed seats at Levi’s Stadium start at $110; apparently, there are $50 “seats” available in a “standing room only” section of some sort.