MINNEAPOLIS
A Star Tribune co-worker passed along a tip Tuesday: StubHub.com, a well-known online marketplace for the reselling of game tickets, had a ticket to Sunday's Vikings/Arizona game at Mall of America Field listed for as low as $4.
Even for an 0-4 team playing in an outdated building (you're welcome, stadium proponents), that seemed really low. But lo and behold, he was correct.
Beyond that, we really wanted to know how it stacked up against the secondary market ticket prices for the other 31 teams in the NFL to see if there were a lot of soft spots. So we searched StubHub for the cheapest ticket available (as of Tuesday afternoon), not including any fees, for every team's next available home game. It was an imperfect science using only one site, but the hope was to provide consistency. Several other factors, such as opponent and game time, can also have an influence. Here, though, are some of the numbers from the ticket check:
--The $4 Vikings ticket (a handful were available at that price, all single tickets, and all in the far reaches of the upper deck) was the lowest price out there. Only two other teams -- the 49ers at $12 and the Chiefs at $10 -- had tickets available on the site for less than $20 to their next home game.
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--The average price of the cheapest available ticket was $66. Again, that doesn't include fees and delivery charges (which can add $20-plus) to the price, but in terms of pure ticket price, that average is more than 16 times the price of the ticket for the Vikings game Sunday.
--The lowest ticket price for seven teams was at least $100: Saints ($106), Bills ($117), Bears ($119), Lions ($145), Chargers ($162), Packers ($194) and Patriots ($200). It's worth noting that six of the seven teams are at least 3-1 this season. Two of them (the Lions and Packers) are the only remaining undefeated teams in the NFL.
--In fairness to the Vikings, the Cardinals are hardly the NFL's most attractive opponent. Tickets to the next home game after that -- Oct. 23 vs. the Packers -- start at $50 on StubHub. Tickets are also still available for Vikings games on the primary market; when games sell out, secondary market prices often go up.
Distributed by MCT Information Services
