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February 8, 2023

On Location Sees Unprecedented Demand as Super Bowl Returns to Site of ’15 Ticketing Disaster

The Super Bowl returns to Phoenix on Sunday for the first time since the ticket-broker system collapsed in the lead up to SB XLIX. Resale brokers and exchanges that had been short-selling tickets to the game failed to fulfill orders as prices hovered around ~$10,000 on game day, leaving hundreds, possibly thousands, of fans without a seat to the New England-Seattle instant classic.

The ensuing blowback tainted the NFL shield and seemingly helped lead to the emergence of On Location as the league sought to achieve more control over their Super Bowl ticketing and hospitality offerings.

It appears as if the shift in ticketing supply allocation and the creation of more mature hospitality products has adequately addressed the league’s concerns.

On Location sold out its most premium Super Bowl packages earlier than ever this year, and “customers can still go and buy tickets without the fear of being let down, which is what happened to people in Phoenix last time,” Scott Jernigan (EVP, chief commercial officer of global sports, On Location and IMG Events) said.

Verified ticket and fan party packages remain available at the time of print through the league’s official hospitality partner.

JWS’ Analysis

: Ticket brokers short-selling Super Bowl tickets in 2014, the year prior to the Phoenix disaster, made a fortune.  

The SB XLVIII ticket market started high under the premise there were more people within driving distance of MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey than any other Super Bowl site in history. The presumption was there would be an abundance of high-net worth individuals from the New York metropolitan area eager to attend North America’s pre-eminent sporting event.

But the game was being played outdoors, not ideal for the corporate crowd that traditionally attends the Super Bowl, and the participants hailed from the west coast making fan travel more costly/difficult.

“The ticket market fell from like a $4,000 get-in to a face value get-in of $1,000,” Patrick Ryan (co-founder and managing director, Eventellect) said.

That was good news for ticket brokers who were able to fill orders inexpensively, and was likely one of the reasons brokers were so eager to take short orders the following year.

The sheer number of short sellers in the market in ‘15, many undercutting one another, initially drove the floor price down. That made tickets more attractive to buyers and likely increased the number of orders placed ahead of the game.  

The marketplaces, which were in competition with one another for ticketing inventory, also played a critical role in the collapse by abandoning vetting protocols and offering listing incentives in the weeks leading up to SB XLIX. They were essentially begging brokers to short-sell.

Remember, with the Patriots and Seahawks playing, two teams that had recently participated in Super Bowls, many anticipated another cheap ticket.

But the market dynamics were different in Phoenix than they were the year prior. State Farm Stadium seats ~10,000 fewer fans than MetLife and Seahawks supporters found Arizona to be an easier travel destination than New York.

Ultimately, far too many tickets were sold for too little and there wasn’t enough inventory available on the secondary market to cover all the orders placed. While some brokers bought up what they could and ate the losses, many others busted on their commitments leaving fans that had paid for seats out in the figurative cold (it was Arizona, so not the literal cold).

In 2016, the owners voted to cut back on the number of tickets distributed to the individual clubs and re-allocated the seats to newly spun-out On Location.

The league’s official hospitality partner has since taken control of even more Super Bowl ducats.

On Location maintains ~90% of Super Bowl ticket and hospitality market share today, up from ~50% in 2017.

PrimeSport was the league’s dominant Super Bowl ticketing and hospitality package provider in 2015. The company negotiated tickets as part of individual team sponsorship deals. On Location acquired PrimeSport in 2017.

While there are still some unofficial operators in the space, their footprint has been significantly reduced by On Location's emergence. Their products are also inferior to what the league partner can offer in terms of inside the perimeter hospitality and access. 

There was unprecedented demand for On Location’s Super Bowl VIP packages this year. Most of the company’s business was booked by August of 2022.

The return of the corporate crowd to the marketplace is largely to credit. “It’s the first event we’ve really seen back at full force since the 2020 Super Bowl,” Jernigan said.

On Location’s increasingly premium hospitality offerings are resonating with that demo. For example, the company’s sold-out

On The Fifty

package includes meet and greets with NFL legends and unparalleled postgame field access.

On Location’s growing association with the game was also likely a factor in the early premium sell-out. SB LVII is the company’s sixth in its current capacity. “It has become the place people go to to buy [tickets and premium hospitality] when they want to attend the Super Bowl,” Jernigan said.

Strong demand for premium hospitality is not limited to the Super Bowl. On Location reports marquee events have been selling well across the board.

Suite sales at the ’23 NCAA Men’s Final Four have already exceeded previous years “by a good margin” and the company has sold out all its in-stadium hospitality products.

It has also sold four times the number of Priority Pass packages for April’s WrestleMania as it did Travel Package to last year’s event and has broken the record for the highest-grossing UFC VIP event twice within the last four months.