Letter to NFL on Super Bowl Ticket Fiasco

February 16, 2011

Ray Anderson
Executive Vice President of Football Operations
The National Football League
280 Park Ave # 12WNew York, NY 10017


Dear Mr. Anderson:

Still another year that the loyal season ticket holders of participating teams get screwed when it comes to acquiring tickets to the Super Bowl. Each team playing in the Super Bowl was allocated 17.5 percent of the roughly 100,000 seats in Cowboys Stadium in Arlington. The Cowboys received 5 percent and the remaining 29 teams received 1.2 percent of the seats (29 X 1.2.). The league distributed the other 25.2 percent. What actually occurs is that the teams place a lower percentage of their 17.5% allocation toward a lottery for season ticket holders. Teams use some of their allocation for players, coaches, sponsors, big money people, and celebrities. They are often secretive about how many tickets actually go into a lottery for season ticket holding fans. These are the people who sat through cold and blistery weather in Green Bay and Pittsburgh in support of their team. As an example, generously, I would guess that about 10% or 10,000 tickets went into the lottery for each team. (My research has shown in the past it was MUCH less than this.) That means that over 80,000 tickets (80%) went to those other than season ticket holders. This should NEVER be.

Now these same loyal fans, if they wished to attend the Super Bowl in support of their teams were stuck with paying anywhere from an average price of $4,000 a ticket, upwards to $30,000! Isn't it interesting that scalpers ALWAYS seem to get plentiful tickets, in fact they are so confident that they advertise tickets sales weeks in advance to the game. The fact is the NFL system is set up to feed the scalpers the Super Bowl tickets each and every year. Face value of the tickets runs from $600 to $1200, yet they charge many multiples of these numbers.

The "celebrities" at the Super Bowl should be the season ticket holders of the participating teams, but they are last on the list. Taking precedent over them are coaches, players, sponsors, big money people, celebrities, and of course, scalpers.

Year after year the NFL and owners receive complaints over Super Bowl ticket distribution. You have demonstrated over and over that you could care less.