No ticket, no problem — if you’re willing to trust a scalper and cough up big bucks
Outside the stadium, as kickoff neared, fans drank six packs of beer and desperately searched for tickets — either by raising a finger for each ticket needed or, for the bold, asking directly.
Groups of men huddled together and dispersed among the crowd asking passersby if they were buying or selling.
Prices fluctuated. Most fans searched for anything below $5,000, but scalpers were asking for as much as $7,400.
And not every deal was as it appeared.
“I’ll walk all the way in with you. You don’t pay me until we get in,” said one scalper to a couple carrying around cash in a Valentine’s Day gift bag.
All the while, Christian preachers scolded the masses through megaphones — advising them to give up sin and join Jesus in heaven — and those with tickets floated overhead on cable cars headed to the stadium.
“You need to start worshiping Jesus and stop worshiping a football team or worshiping the money,” said a preacher named Tim, who declined to give his name.
Nigel Spill, a 56-year-old Westwood, California, resident, said he budgeted $2,000 for a ticket and didn’t bring his ATM card so as not to be tempted to spend more.
He has been to 35 consecutive Super Bowls, but he didn’t find a ticket by kickoff and said he planned to watch the Big Game at a bar for maybe the first time in his life.
This is the least sad sob story ever,” he joked. “I’m bummed, it’ll sting for a few days.”
Spill said he paid $950 for a ticket to the 2019 Super Bowl. He said he was not sure if any of the scalpers were legitimate.
“Maybe one?” he said. He said he saw one fan buy a ticket and run out of the stadium cursing out a scalper because it turned out to be fake. As for him, he said he’d wait holding up a sign for another half hour or so, and then head to the nearest bar to catch the game.
“I don’t watch these games on TV, so I don’t know how that works,” he said.
Police cleared fans from outside the stadium by 6:20 p.m., and the crowd dispersed to 199th Street.
By then, Jeff Francis, a historian who lives in St. Petersburg, had come to the realization that he would not find a ticket to the game.
He has gone to more than a dozen Super Bowls, but he did not find any trustworthy scalpers in Miami — and the asking price for seemingly legitimate tickets was too high.
He was offered two tickets for $2,500 each, which is well below the market rate. He was also offered some for about $7,000.
He saw one man get fleeced for his money when the ticket ended up being fake.
“My advice would be don’t even do this,” he said.” If you’re gonna do this, make darn sure that whoever you buy from walks you all the way to the gate. It can be a real ticket, but it can be a stolen ticket.”
This story was originally published February 2, 2020 at 7:42 PM.
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