Super Bowl tickets not for public consumption anymore

Thirty years ago, Joe Namath guaranteed a Super Bowl win for the New York Jets and the average fan could walk in off the street in Miami to buy a ticket.

The Jets didn't quite make it back this year. Neither will the average fan.

For South Florida's eighth stint as Super Bowl host, about the only guarantee is that average folks weren't meant to have tickets. At least not at face value.

"You have a lot of major sporting events - the World Cup, the Masters, the Final Four - but the Super Bowl is the big one that everybody wants to see," said Mark Halpern, a Fort Lauderdale ticket broker.

There has been no public sale of Super Bowl tickets in a quarter-century. Prices are set at $325 and $400 by the NFL, but they can generate five times that on the resale market. Limousines and corporate hospitality tents dominate the scene.

But at one time, back in the formative years, the NFL actually had to beat the bushes to help sell tickets.

Want proof? Check out page 6F of The Miami Herald from Dec. 3, 1967.

"World Championship Football. Super Bowl. January 14," the 3x6 ad says above an image of two players stretching for a pass. "Tickets on sale for $6.00 and $8.00. Reserved seats at Orange Bowl Committee ticket office."

The inaugural Super Bowl attracted only 61,946 fans to the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1967, the event's only non-sellout. When the game moved to the Orange Bowl the following year, it still was a hard sell.

Miami Dolphins season-ticket holders could buy a Super Bowl ticket for every season ticket held. It wasn't enough.

"We traveled to the site in October," said Don Weiss, the retired NFL executive director who organized the first 14 Super Bowls. "We'd go around to the talk shows, hyping the game. It was a sell atmosphere in those days."

Some 20,000 tickets went on public sale just before Thanksgiving 1967. It took about a month to sell them all, Weiss said.

It was much the same when the Super Bowl returned to Miami the following year. That was when Namath changed perceptions of the game.

Three days before facing the heavily favored Baltimore Colts, the brash quarterback guaranteed a victory. The Jets won 16-7.

When Kansas City beat Minnesota the following year, it established the AFL - soon to be the AFC - as an equal. Within a few years, the Super Bowl changed dramatically.

The last public sale of Super Bowl tickets was for the 1971 game at Miami. The practice of offering season-ticket holders in the host city a one-for-one deal ended in 1972.

The NFL now has very specific percentages for ticket allocation. The league keeps 25.3 percent - about 15,000 tickets this year - for its use, with about two-thirds of those going to sponsors, advertisers and the TV network showing the game.

Each of the participating teams gets 17.5 percent of the tickets. The host club receives 10 percent and each of the other 27 teams gets 1.1 percent. Once club officials meet their needs for staff and business associates, the rest - usually about half - go into a lottery for season-ticket holders.

"You wind up making a lot of people unhappy," Dolphins president Eddie Jones said. "People don't understand why they don't win. But that's what a lottery is."

For the desperate, there are the ticket brokers. But the going rate last week was $1,750 for an upper end-zone seat, without even knowing the participants.

It's illegal in Florida to buy or sell tickets for more than $1 above face value. So Halpern's Front & Center Entertainment sells them as part of a package that includes programs, souvenirs and other perks.

"Some will include amenities," Halpern said. "We have a hotel package available. If you need a place to stay, we can do that."

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