By Alfred Branch, Jr.

If there are people worried about the stock market and the nation’s economic outlook, you wouldn’t know it judging from the prices for tickets to Super Bowl XLII between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots.

As of today, Jan. 24, TicketNetwork, parent company of TicketNews, had more than 2,200 tickets available for the big game, and the least expensive seats were selling in excess of $2,400 a piece. On other sites, such as TicketSolutions.com, a large Midwestern brokerage, tickets were starting at about $3,000 each. Face value for Super Bowl tickets start at about $700 each.

Those numbers are a bargain compared to StubHub!, where the average ticket price for the game was $4,370 each, more than $300 above the average price for Super Bowl XLI last year between the Indianapolis Colts and the Chicago Bears.

Luxury suites for the game, which includes catered dining, were also selling at a premium; one that held more than 10 people was being offered on TicketNetwork for about a quarter of a million dollars.

Partially driving the prices is the fact that two teams from Northeastern cities are playing on Feb. 3. Two wealthy Northeastern cities. While tickets are moving, they are not yet moving quickly, according to brokers, but those sales are expected to increase over the next several days and next week. They also said that prices will likely remain at a premium.

“It’s a high price, which is stymieing sales a bit at the moment, but that will change,” Ray Cooke, owner of Connecticut-based TicketPro.com, told TicketNews. “We’ll see things pick up over the weekend.”

One Chicago area broker named Tom, who requested his last name not be revealed, said it will be interesting to see if the current economic tension will have an effect on sales. He said he expects fans will continue to pay, but whether corporate package sales will remain high is the question. “I’m not sure the economy will continue to support these prices,” he said, but added that the financial services industry, which is concentrated in New York and Boston, will make the difference.

(The image accompanying this story is from FanFares.com; Super Bowl XLII is trademarked by the National Football League)