#Answer: It’s The Oldest Trick In The (Play)Book
The NFL. Say those three letters and almost every person in United States knows you’re talking about football. Many Americans (even if this baseball loving author will never agree) believe the sport has become the nation’s pastime. Even outside the U.S., it’s a safe bet that many associate these three letters with American football.
The NFL has blown by Major League Baseball in terms of revenue generated, with approximately $12 billion created in the 2014–15 season and $13 billion expected this season (the MLB generated roughly $9 billion in 2014 and $9.5 billion in 2015). NFL superstars are revered as modern-day gladiators, and the league has been a model for brands looking to expand their audiences beyond a core viewership, all despite a number of high-profile PR nightmares (Ray Rice, Greg Hardy, Deflategate, the continually devolving Johnny Football saga — the list goes on and on) in just the last 18 months.
But is the question at hand — will a Super Bowl ticket still be a hot commodity in 2025 — even worth asking? The dangers of football have been well documented recently due to an increased understanding of the risks that concussions pose and the long-term ill-effects they have, most commonly seen through the development of a brain disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.
Risk v. Reward
Last year, President Obama explicitly stated that if he had a son, he would not let him play pro football. Even the voluntary Roman gladiator, who was beloved by masses and regarded as a hallmark of entertainment centuries ago, went by the wayside when the brutality of his event became too much for its audience and its participants.
When people make the argument that football is on the outs in American culture, they often point to declining participation rates among children and teens. But by how much have these participation rates dropped, and is it a serious cause for concern?
It is true that Pop Warner, America’s largest youth football program, saw a 9.5 percent decline in participation between 2010–12. However, the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHSA) found that high school football participation increased in the 2013–14 school year, reversing a four-year trend of negative participation rates. Furthermore, according to Sports Illustrated’s analysis of NFHSA data, 1.084 million boys and 1,500 girls played high school football in the 2014–15 school year, nearly double the number of students who participated in the second most popular sport of track and field.
While the reasons behind the ebbs and flows of participation rates in football may be unclear, perhaps President Obama’s comparison of football players to people who smoke summed it up best: “At this point, there’s a little bit of caveat emptor. These guys, they know what they’re doing. They know what they’re buying into. It is no longer a secret. It’s sort of the feeling I have about smokers, you know?”
Essentially, football players know the dangers of playing the game they love, and they’re willing to risk their health and safety for the potential rewards. For all the NFL players who have come out and said, hindsight being 20/20, they wouldn’t have played football, there are those players who say they wouldn’t have changed a thing.
“Football is a good sport. Even if my kids, let’s say, are going to have a couple of years of related health issues when they’re 81 or 82, and they wouldn’t have had it otherwise, I’d still rather have them play football than not.” — Charles Godfrey, Former NFL Lineman.
“I’d rather have the experience of playing [football] and, who knows, die 10, 15 years earlier than not be able to play in the NFL and live a long life. It’s something I’ve wanted to do with my life and I wanted to accomplish.” — Chris Conte, Current NFL Defensive Back, Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Moreover, the continued participation of NFL players in the sport doubles as a tacit endorsement of these quotes. Sure, some players have retired now that the understanding of the risks involved in football has improved, but we haven’t seen a mass exodus of players leaving the game.
And, to some extent, can you blame them? Beyond the satisfaction of achieving a dream, the economics of the NFL make it an alluring profession. With a league minimum salary of $435,000 in 2015, the NFL is an immediate ticket into the top income levels. For top tier players, the payouts can be astronomical. Take, for instance, Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who earned $11.6 million in 2015, on top of the $35 million one-time bonus he received for signing the contract back in 2013… and that doesn’t even take endorsements into account. (Hey Rodgers! Discount Double-Check!)
Lastly, let’s just take a second to think about how powerful the NFL is. People joke that the NFL “owns a day of the week,” or at least shares it with the big man upstairs. But I would argue that, for four months out of the year, it owns two nights of the week (Sunday and Monday), as well. And it’s a $13 billion industry. That’s the equivalent of the shaving industry or the U.S. bottled water industry. Safe to say, the NFL isn’t going anywhere for awhile.
Wrap-Up The Pregame Show, It’s Time For Kick Off
So now that we know answering the question of how valuable a Super Bowl ticket will be in 2025 is not an exercise done in vain, let’s turn to the economics of the situation.
A quick look at the average face value of a ticket to previous Super Bowls illustrates the dramatic rise in the cost to attend the big game. Determining whether this trend will continue really boils down to the oldest play in the book: supply and demand.
First, let’s look at the supply side of the argument, since it’s comparatively more set in stone than the demand side. The supply here is the amount of Super Bowl tickets available, which is limited to the capacity of each stadium. This year’s festivities will be hosted at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, CA, the home of the San Francisco 49ers. Official capacity of the venue is 68,500, but the NFL has every incentive to pack fans in like sardines, so let’s just say they squeeze 74,000 people into the stadium once standing-room-only ticket holders are taken into account. This figure is actually still below the Super Bowl average attendance of roughly 76,000, and is well below the record crowd number of 103,985 set by Super Bowl XIV in 1980 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, CA.
Conventional wisdom suggests that, given advancements in technology and design, capacity would increase as more and more new stadiums are built. But this line of reasoning hasn’t held up. Aiming for a more intimate setting, the majority of new stadiums have limited capacity to below the average Super Bowl attendance of 76,000. In fact, only two of the six NFL stadiums created since 2005 have capacities over 76,000. And the two stadiums in the making, the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, GA and the Los Angeles Entertainment Center in Inglewood, CA, have capacities of 71,000 and 70,000, respectively.
This smaller stadium strategy makes sense because, due to the rise of HDTV and cable packages that allow fans to watch multiple games, NFL organizations have found themselves selling ticket holders more than just a game. Attending NFL games in-person is now about an experience that can’t be replicated from the couch; having a smaller stadium goes a long way toward facilitating that experience, as fans who are closer to the action will feel like they’re a part of it.
So it appears the fad of building massive stadiums has ended. Looking ahead, this means we can expect a more limited supply of Super Bowl tickets than has typically been available, especially since one of the two factors that have outsized influences in determining the Super Bowl’s venue is stadium quality. (The other is climate, but the NFL’s willingness to host Super Bowl XLVIII in 2014 at MetLife Stadium — an outdoor facility located just outside New York City — during the heart of winter lends credence to the theory that stadium quality trumps location.)
On the other hand, the demand for tickets is based on a number of factors. While attendance tends to fluctuate for each team based on the quality of the product on the field, the median average attendance for regular season home games in the NFL has remained fairly steady over the last decade at around 68,000–69,000 people. But this isn’t the number we should go by to project the direction of Super Bowl ticket prices in the future. Instead, an examination of population trends may paint a better picture of the future demand for Super Bowl tickets.
Multiple studies show that more and more Americans are opting to reside in urban areas, and the growth of cities has been well documented. But what does this mean for the NFL and the Super Bowl? According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of 2013, nine out of the ten largest cities in the U.S. are home to an NFL team (given San Jose’s close proximity to Santa Clara/San Francisco and now that the Rams have officially moved to Los Angeles).
What’s more, between 2010 and 2013, each of these ten cities experienced population growths of at least 2.4 percent, with the exceptions of Chicago and Philadelphia, which grew by 0.9 and 1.8 percent, respectively.
But population projections are what can give us the most insight into predicting future demand for Super Bowl tickets. Fortunately, the Urban Institute has provided in depth growth estimates for metropolitan regions across the country; the charts below illustrate population growth projections between 2010 and 2030 for NFL cities throughout the league.
While not all residents in a metropolitan area have an interest in the NFL or like the team in that area, a substantial increase in the number of residents in a metro area should result a bump in the number of active fans for that local team and the NFL.
Conclusion: The Highlight Reel
So what does this all mean for projecting the price of Super Bowl tickets down the line? The number of tickets available each year will undoubtedly vary due to the change in venue, but the trend of newer, comparatively smaller stadiums indicates that the supply of tickets will not match the considerable projections in population growth in cities that are home to NFL teams. This real decreasing supply of Super Bowl tickets will result in upward pressure on Super Bowl ticket prices.
On the demand side, the projected growth of metropolitan areas throughout the U.S., specifically in NFL cities, suggests two things. First, if more people live in NFL cities, then we can expect more people to become fans of their hometown NFL team. These individuals will be closer in proximity to an NFL team, increasing the frequency with which they interact with NFL products and marketing.
Secondly, more people living in NFL cities means more people living in the cities that will host future Super Bowls.
If we reasonably assume that Super Bowl ticket holders and attendees are predominately comprised of two groups — fans of the teams participating in the game and NFL fans who live in the city in which the big game is taking place — then increasing populations in NFL metropolitan areas will assuredly result in increasing demand for tickets. This increase in demand will lead to significant upward pressure on the price of a Super Bowl ticket.
Enough! Just Give Me The “TL;DR” Version
If your goal is to see a Super Bowl in person, you’re better off booking your flights to Houston next year instead of waiting for prices to drop in the future. The league’s ability to expand its audience, the construction of modestly sized stadiums, and projected population growth for NFL cities is a recipe for Super Bowl tickets to continue their stratospheric price rise.
