INDIANAPOLIS — The price tag of a prime seat in Lucas Oil Stadium for Super Bowl XLVI is officially $1,000, but cash-rich fans will shell out multiples of that to see the NFL championship game.

Thanks to a thriving and perfectly legal resale market, premium ticket prices for the Feb. 5 event are climbing into the five figures.

While a seat in the stadium’s nose-bleed section is going for four times or more its face value of $800, some of the best spots are being resold, online, for $20,000 a pop.

That’s chump change for whomever decides to plunk down $1.1 million for the use of a luxury suite in the stadium, advertised on the popular ticket exchange site, Stub Hub, just two weeks before the game.

But it’s a lot more money than fans paid to see the first Super Bowl in 1967. Tickets went for $12 for a great seat, and $6 in the cheap-seat sections. This year’s halftime show features aging rock icon Madonna. Fans at Super Bowl I were entertained at halftime by a couple of marching bands.

Pro football may be a sport loved by the masses — the NFL sold 17 million tickets last year and it has its own official beer sponsor, Bud Light. But ticket-pricing experts say the Super Bowl has become an event for people on a champagne budget who can afford its super-sized ticket prices.

“It’s a different animal, like no other event in sports,” said Joris Drayer, a Temple University assistant professor of sports management who studies sports ticket prices. “When I do my research on this topic, I have to exclude the Super Bowl because it’s just so different. It’s a spectacle more than a game.”

The spectacle of it is beefed up by pricey parties — $1,000 will get you into the “Leather and Laces” soiree hosted by Playboy magazine — and pumped up prices for hotel rooms, parking spots and bar cover charges.

The NFL is a bit defensive about that perception. NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy insists that the formula for distributing Super Bowl tickets is fan-based. He said about 75 percent of the tickets are doled out directly to the NFL team franchises, at face value prices, for them to divvy up to their fans.

The breakdown: Each conference champ team gets 17.5 percent of the tickets; the host city team gets 5 percent of the tickets; and the 29 other teams each get 1.2 percent of the ticket share. The NFL takes the remaining 25.2 percent and spreads it out among the NFL Players Association, event sponsors, some charities (to auction off to raise money for their cause) and the media.

“They’re accessible to fans,” McCarthy said of Super Bowl tickets.

One factor affecting that accessibility: The size of Lucas Oil Stadium.

While last year’s game was played in a Texas-sized stadium equipped with 103,219 seats, this year’s game will be played in a stadium with 68,000 seats — about 5,000 of them added for the game. It’s one of the smallest Super Bowl venues in the event’s 46-year history.

NFL officials are working to make sure all those added seats are good to go. They want to avoid last year’s Super Bowl ticket debacle, when 1,250 ticket-holding fans were turned away after their temporary-built seats were deemed unsafe on game day.

The NFL can’t control the ticket-scalping prices that make the event so expensive, but it does profit from the process. In 2008, the NFL launched its own version of electronic ticket-scalping. It paired up with the giant ticket broker, Ticketmaster, to create the NFL Ticket Exchange. It’s where ticket holders can go to hawk their tickets at a price point chosen by the seller.

NFL Ticket Exchange charges a 15 percent service fee. So two $20,000 tickets — the price for a Row 3 seat near the 50-yard line posted on the website 13 days before the game — will actually cost you $26,000.

What the NFL does offer is a guarantee: The tickets are good or you get all of your money back.

There might be some cheaper ways to get a ticket. StubHub, a ticket exchange owned by the mega-online auction site, eBay, offers a range of tickets with the same kind of money-back guarantee.

StubHub spokeswoman Joellen Ferrer said if you’re willing to take a risk, you can wait it out. She said ticket prices spike just after the conference championship games are played, then tend to drop closer to the event after die-hard — and well-heeled — fans have scooped up the pricier tickets. The closer to the game, the more eager ticket sellers become.

Still, there won’t really be any cheap seats. The median ticket price for a Super Bowl ticket sold on StubHub last year was $2,500. Some tickets sold right before kickoff, in the StubHub party tent set up near the game site, went for $1,600 apiece.

“The Super Bowl is the crown jewel of sporting events,” Ferrer said. “The prices reflect that.”

Mike Peduto, owner of the Indianapolis-based ticket broker, Circle City Tickets, said it’s been years since the average cost-conscious fan has had a shot at going to a Super Bowl game. “It’s not really possible to get a ticket at face value anymore,” said Peduto. “But there are plenty of tickets out there if you’re willing to pay the price.”

Peduto thinks the fact that the New York Giants will be in the game, playing against the New England Patriots, will keep ticket prices relatively high and will pay off for Indianapolis restaurants, hotels and bars Giants fans patronize.

“The Giants are Wall Street’s team,” Peduto said. “Giant fans are willing to drop big bucks.” At least one Patriot fan isn’t: Indianapolis resident Joe Roeder is a devoted Pats fan in a city where New England is the arch-rival of the hometown Colts. He’s taken plenty of abuse for it and would love to see his favorite team play the championship game in the Colts’ home stadium.

But he’ll be watching the game on a big-screen TV about two blocks away at Stadium Tavern, a bar owned by his father. “The price of tickets is outrageous,” Roeder said. “I don’t think real football fans can afford to go anymore. If you don’t have $10,000 to $15,000 to spend on Super Bowl weekend, you’re better off watching it on TV.”