OT - Go get em UB -
By Darren Rovell
ESPN.com
SAN DIEGO -- The face value of a Super Bowl XXXVII ticket is $400, but Oakland Raiders and Tampa Bay Buccaneers fans scouring the market for tickets hours after the Jon Gruden Bowl matchup was determined were staring at a minimum price tag of $1,600 each for upper-level end-zone seats.
"The fact is that the real ticket prices depend on what cities the teams come from," said Jeff Brewer, a 25-year-old diehard Raiders fan from Ramona, Calif., who was in San Diego on Sunday at the NFL Experience. "The Raiders' fan base is obviously in California, so tickets aren't going to be that easy to come by."
Fans of each team get 17.5 percent of the tickets, about 12,000 at Qualcomm Stadium, but the Raiders haven't been to the Super Bowl in 19 years. Add to that the number of cheap flights from Oakland or Los Angeles to San Diego still available -- or at worst an eight- and two-hour drive, respectively -- and demand figures to be drastically up from Super Bowl XXXVI.
Last year, brokers and scalpers in New Orleans started selling tickets at $1,100. But many factors -- including the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the tough economy and the lack of hotel rooms due to the game's coinciding with Mardi Gras -- caused prices to steadily decline by about $100 per day. By game day, scalpers were hoping to save face by selling for face value. An hour before the game, tickets could be found for $200 or less.
Although brokers say an Eagles-Raiders matchup would have been the ultimate for their business, many ticket sellers had to feel fortunate that the Tennessee Titans didn't win the AFC championship.
"We already know we're going to receive tickets back from Eagles fans," said Andy Mendoza, a sales representative from TicketCity.com, which was selling upper-level end-zone seats for $1,600 on Sunday. "We'll probably keep them at $1,600 (Monday) unless we starting blowing them out and then it will go up."
If the Titans had won, Mendoza said, he believed ticket prices would drop because their fans don't travel as well as Raiders fans would. Now that the silver and black are in, Mendoza said ticket prices will probably not drop much, if at all. Great location tickets on the lower level were selling for $4,000 to $6,000 and up depending on field location at various ticket brokers around town.
