What does it take to get to the Super Bowl? Well, either you’re playing, or it’ll cost about four months’ rent
Action Network’s analysis of income and rent prices across different US cities works out just how much a ticket to the Big Game might set you back.
It’s not long now until the Big Game, leaving fans with only a couple of days to make their picks and predictions, learn Spanish slang, or rustle up a few bucks for a last-minute trip to Santa Clara’s Levi’s Stadium.
Or, more specifically, at least $6,773 — the national average price for a ticket to Super Bowl LX, as calculated by Action Network from entry-level listings across marketplaces including Ticketmaster and StubHub.
Breaking that number down, Action developed the Super Bowl Ticket Burden Index to work out the financial impact of getting a ticket for the average person in 301 different US cities, based on factors like monthly household income, local rent, utilities, and grocery prices.
Scrimmage and save
Looking at income and rent specifically across the cities studied, the analysis found that Americans would have to work about 174 hours on average to earn the cash for a Super Bowl ticket — though you’d have to work more than double this if you were in San Juan (454 hours). While high rent prices in the Puerto Rican city place the ticket’s cost equivalent to 3.7 months of rent, you’d at least be very close to where halftime performer Bad Bunny grew up.
Those already in California’s Bay Area would not only have the least distance to travel to get to this year’s Super Bowl, but they’d also have to put in the least amount of working hours to get inside the arena, with Santa Clara residents needing to labor for only 73 hours (roughly nine working days) to afford a dream ticket — about 2.3 months’ worth of rent.
Beyond gauging what sacrifices Sunday’s some 68,500 lucky stadium dwellers might have made to watch the game IRL, the index also functions like a wage and rent price barometer across various US cities. For example, while the 158 hours you’d work in New York City to get ~$7,000 is only about 50 hours more than you’d need to work in Enterprise, Nevada, you’d have to save rent money for eight more months if you lived in the latter.
All told, Action Network found that Topeka, Kansas, had the highest financial burden to match the ticket price across the six measures analyzed.
