Lester Bagley, Vikings executive vice president of public affairs and stadium development, didn't mince words when it comes to the price and exclusivity of Super Bowl tickets.
"We haven't gotten the final pricing, but we know the NFL takes over the stadium, and takes over the pricing," Bagley said. "It's going to be some sticker shock for sure for our market. Tickets are going to be hard to come by in terms of access, because the league takes them. They're going to be sticker shock on prices. But it's part of the deal when you get the Super Bowl.
"You get 100,000 coming into your market that support the game. Over the 10 days we'll have 1 million people come to the market. But just for the four-day weekend for the game, we'll get 100,000 people here. It's a lot of the top NFL sponsors and all of teams, all 32 NFL teams are represented and the media. It's a big production. Tickets are going to be a challenge, for sure."
The NFL will put 65,000 seats or so into U.S. Bank Stadium for the game in February 2018. But it's one of the great disappointments for one of the biggest sporting events in the world that regular fans typically are priced out of attending.
Bagley talked about the costs for an average ticket at this year's Super Bowl in Houston.
"To get into the lower bowl it was approximately $2,000, give or take," he said. "That's a lower-level seat. I think in the upper deck you could get there for $1,000. Those are prices from Houston, but the Minnesota ticket prices haven't been set."
Even though ticket prices haven't been released, scalpers are already listing tickets on the secondary market. This week SeatGeek's lowest ticket price was $2,600 for an upper-level end zone ticket.
In Houston, TicketCity kept track of the median ticket price on the secondary market. In early January, it was just above $6,000. By Jan. 31, right before the game, it had dropped by half to a still-drastic $3,000.