At their best, football games are a spectacle of American pageantry and passion. Fans wearing the teams’ colors fill 70,000-seat stadiums and roar as their heroes fight a pitched battle on a field of green.
But the Super Bowl, supposedly the greatest spectacle in sports, lacks the spirit that fuels the soul of football. The reason: Fans of the two teams can’t get a seat at the game, at least not without paying exorbitant prices that are beyond the reach of most folks.
Colts season-ticket holders had a shot at tickets to the big game. Their names were placed into a lottery, and the winners could buy tickets at face value of $800 or $1,000. The rest are left to fend for tickets being scalped online for many times those rates. Or, of course, you could turn to a travel agency offering travel and ticket packages to South Florida for the game for $4,500 and up.
Where do the travel agencies get the tickets? Either directly or indirectly, from the NFL.
The result of the system is that at the game you get lots of people — many from the NFL itself, corporations and other special interests — who want to be a part of the Super Bowl event but who have no real rooting interest in the game. They sit and watch without cheering and without caring about the outcome.
Just listen when the game is televised Sunday. It doesn’t sound like a football game. The roar is muted, the passion turned down. Meanwhile, thousands of fans — real fans of the Saints and Colts — watch from home, rooting with all their might for their heroes.
Shame on the NFL and its teams for not giving them a better shot at getting affordable tickets to the game.
Editorials
Editorial: True fans shut out of Super Bowl experience
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