If the recent trend among Super Bowl champions is any indication, fans of the Green Bay Packers can expect to pay more for their tickets next season.
Four of the previous five Super Bowl winners raised ticket prices in the season after their championship. The only team to keep prices the same was the 2009 Pittsburgh Steelers, who edged the Arizona Cardinals 27-23 in Super Bowl XLIII at the end of the 2008 season and subsequently followed in the footsteps of most of the rest of the NFL by maintaining prices during the height of the recession. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell told the Associated Press in March 2009 that almost three-quarters of the NFL’s 32 teams would not raise ticket prices for 2009.
The Steelers mostly held the line on ticket prices following their fifth Super Bowl win at the end of the 2005 season, when the cost of club seats at Heinz Field were increased by 3 percent while all other prices remained the same.
The Steelers, of course, were defeated by the Packers, 31-25, in Super Bowl XLV Sunday, February 6. History suggests that Steelers fans were not likely to endure a price hike next year, regardless of how the Steelers fared against the Packers. The Steelers raised ticket prices prior to the 2010 season and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported last March that the Steelers usually increase prices every other year.
Each of the Packers’ other three predecessors as champions — the 2009 New Orleans Saints, the 2007 New York Giants and the 2006 Indianapolis Colts — raised prices after winning it all. The Saints, whose 10-game season ticket prices (eight regular season games and two preseason contests) in 2009 ranged from $180 in the upper terrace end zone to $2,400 for club sideline seats between the 20-yard-lines, raised those prices to $250 and $2,980, respectively, in 2010.
While all seats saw an increase, more than half of the season ticket holders experienced an increase of 10 percent or less, according to The Times-Picayune last March. The Saints’ hike was their first since 2008.
The Giants’ average ticket price rose 8.3 percent to $88.06 in 2008. The raise was slightly above the NFL average hike that season of 7.9 percent. The Colts raised their season ticket prices by 10.5 percent to $70.98 in 2007. That increase was well above the average NFL hike of 6.9 percent.
Packers fans this season paid an average of $9 more per ticket than they did in 2009. The 2010 increase was the first for the franchise since 2007, though team president Mark Murphy told the Associated Press in January 2010 that the Packers’ average ticket price from 2007 through 2009 ranked 30th in the 32-team NFL.
