The price for an average seat dipped to about $5,100 by Monday morning, but that’s still well ahead of the resale price of each Super Bowl SeatGeek has tracked since 2010.
–A.J. Perez, USA TODAY Sports, “Super Bowl tickets averaging more than $5,000”

For a sporting event that is well-embedded in popular culture and is perceived as the ultimate fan’s journey, $5,000/ticket just might be the cut-off for most people.

The play to “buy” a big screen television for the weekend of the Super Bowl and then return it days later because of a “space problem” in the family room is still alive and well. But for most people, spending $500 to $1,000 for a new TV is not a spur of the moment decision.

Keeping this in mind, what are we to think when a ticket to a championship game is a 5 to 10-fold spike compared to a new high-definition TV?

From a branding perspective, the NFL may be enduring its second major headache in recent years. When fans watch preseason games, the regular season and playoffs, they are invested in their team. As we know with ourselves, friends, family and random grown men dressed as gritty Vikings, we take this game seriously. And, if everything magically goes to plan through heroic victories and prayer, it can all lead to…

the Super Bowl!

Hwever, it appears that fans are being priced out of the NFL’s biggest game.

The headline of $5,000 per ticket to attend the Super Bowl at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California will irk most people, especially fans of the Carolina Panthers and Denver Broncos. This pricing doesn’t even give people with good to great finances a chance or even a worthwhile bang for the buck. How can this discouraging trend be reversed? Odds are that this pivot will have to result from fans protesting and not going, visibly showing tens of thousands of empty seats during football’s most important showcase of the season. But what are the chances of that kind of random unanimity among all those non-media, non-VIP fans?

What are the odds of the Cleveland Browns going to the Super Bowl next year?

The image that attending the Super Bowl is only for celebrities and CEO’s will surely continue. At a certain point though, people will see what they need to through the highest definition in their living rooms (or their neighbor’s man cave). And living in a society that is increasingly pushing us towards building our own personal entertainment suites with gadgets and screens galore will have an effect on the multiple generations of current NFL fans, plus future generations who will be raised to know and believe the Super Bowl is simply a digital destination.

In the meantime, if only there was someway to overcome the impossible task of bypassing the $5,000 price tag?

And just when all appears lost and seeing, say, an Eskimo in the stands at the Super Bowl seems more likely than you obtaining that mirage of a ticket…

Boy Meets World: For the win.