The magical Sunday has come and gone, Patriots fans have been rejoicing for the past two days, as Seahawks fans are still trying to figure out why Marshawn Lynch wasn’t handed the ball at the 1-yard line. Super Bowl XLIX will go down in history as one of the greatest games on the field. However, it also paved its way into the history books for reasons unrelated to the actual game that was played on the field.
On Sunday night, between 6:31 PM and 10:10 PM, approximately 114.4 million Americans tuned their televisions into the biggest football game of the year. This makes Super Bowl XLIX the most watched television program in United States history. This year’s Super Bowl was also the highest rated Super Bowl in the past 30 years, topping last year’s match-up between the Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks by 2.2 million viewers.
Many of the millions of viewers can be traced back to the halftime performance, as Katy Perry shined on stage along with special guests Lenny Kravitz and Missy Elliot. Perry’s halftime performance itself was viewed by 118.5 million viewers, which means 4.1 million people tuned into the game just to watch her performance.
For fans that decided they wanted to watch the big game in person, they were stuck paying premium prices for even the worst seats in the house. According to ESPN’s Darren Rovell, a ticket to Super Bowl XLIX was the most expensive in the 49-year history of the game. The average price paid for one ticket was $4,600. On the Thursday before the game, with a limited amount of supply left, some fans were shelling out upwards of $10,000 a ticket for seats in the upper deck, just to have a shot at seeing their team win the game.
Prices for this year’s game rose so quickly because ticket brokers sold tickets to the game without actually having them in hand. In past years, they would rely on the price dropping as it got closer to the game in order to make their margin on the sale. However, this year that didn’t happen. So by Thursday, ticket re-sellers had a choice of either buying a ticket at a loss and giving it to their customer, or offering a refund and admitting that they never had the tickets. This left many fans that bought tickets ahead of time stuck without a way into the game.
After all is said and done, no matter what team you’re a fan of, there is no denying that Super Bowl XLIX will be Super Bowl for the ages.
Nick Turgeon
Student Board member
On Sunday night, between 6:31 PM and 10:10 PM, approximately 114.4 million Americans tuned their televisions into the biggest football game of the year. This makes Super Bowl XLIX the most watched television program in United States history. This year’s Super Bowl was also the highest rated Super Bowl in the past 30 years, topping last year’s match-up between the Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks by 2.2 million viewers.
Many of the millions of viewers can be traced back to the halftime performance, as Katy Perry shined on stage along with special guests Lenny Kravitz and Missy Elliot. Perry’s halftime performance itself was viewed by 118.5 million viewers, which means 4.1 million people tuned into the game just to watch her performance.
For fans that decided they wanted to watch the big game in person, they were stuck paying premium prices for even the worst seats in the house. According to ESPN’s Darren Rovell, a ticket to Super Bowl XLIX was the most expensive in the 49-year history of the game. The average price paid for one ticket was $4,600. On the Thursday before the game, with a limited amount of supply left, some fans were shelling out upwards of $10,000 a ticket for seats in the upper deck, just to have a shot at seeing their team win the game.
Prices for this year’s game rose so quickly because ticket brokers sold tickets to the game without actually having them in hand. In past years, they would rely on the price dropping as it got closer to the game in order to make their margin on the sale. However, this year that didn’t happen. So by Thursday, ticket re-sellers had a choice of either buying a ticket at a loss and giving it to their customer, or offering a refund and admitting that they never had the tickets. This left many fans that bought tickets ahead of time stuck without a way into the game.
After all is said and done, no matter what team you’re a fan of, there is no denying that Super Bowl XLIX will be Super Bowl for the ages.
Nick Turgeon
Student Board member