Super Bowl With a Smirk III: Falling ticket prices, Taylor Swift’s super suite, pro-Chiefs refs and more
Super Bowl With a Smirk, a beloved annual staple of the Miami Herald the years we remember to do it, is back! (Although ‘beloved’ may be stretching it.) Smirk flies under the banner Make Fun, Not War and delights to needle and tweak the NFL and the gravitas of its Big Game. Welcome back for our third of five daily editions:
Ticket prices to Sunday’s Super Bowl 59 game, Chiefs-Eagles in New Orleans, reportedly have dropped 58 percent in the past week, which is a little like hearing about a price cut on Beverly Hills mansions or a one-day-only sale at a Bentley dealership. Most regular folks still go in hock trying to go to a Super Bowl.
Still, this one is expected to have a lower average cost than the previous two Super Bowls, as an after-market ticket has fallen to $4,627 on average from $6,492 one week earlier at Gametime, for example.
The decline is blamed among other things on “Chiefs fatigue,” exorbitant New Orleans hotel rates and consumer concern over higher prices coming due to President Trump’s tariffs on foreign goods.
You can bet, though, that all 83,000 Superdome seats (including suites) will be filled. Here is Smirk’s pie chart analysis of who will be in the seats:
30,000: Officials and employees from NFL, Chiefs, Eagles and 30 other teams.
17,000: Secret Service and security related to Trump being at game.
12,000: Taylor Swift’s entourage.
10,000: Other music and entertainment celebrities, their families and pets.
8,000: Executives of league sponsors and advertisers.
6,000: Actual football fans.
▪ Word leaks that, as boyfriend/Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce is at work down on the field Sunday, Swift will be watching from a $2 million Superdome suite whose menu will include lobster and seafood towers, sushi, tomahawk steaks branded with the Super Bowl 59 log and, of course, her cocktail of choice, vodka cranberry. Kelce, asked this week if he would be proposing on the field, said, “Wouldn’t you like to know.” (Well, not especially. But Taylor might! Tick-tock, Kelce.)
▪ ESPN asked 66 of its NFL writers and analysts to predict the game, and the lemmings predictably played safe and went with favored two-time champion Kansas City by a 41-25 margin, or 62%. (Smirk’s later ego, Greg Cote, will have his own SB pick online Thursday.)
▪ U.S. states also are leaning Chiefs, based on BetOnline.ag’s geotagged data from 130,000 tweets on social media. It showed more states think K.C. will win by a 27-23 margin, with Florida siding with the majority. The results are considered to be roughly as reliable as the opinions of 66 ESPN employees.
▪ Prop bet of the day: A false-start penalty is the betting favorite to be the first flag thrown, followed by offensive holding. Speaking of officiating, the NFL continues to deny conspiracy theories that the league and its game officials are favoring the Chiefs — despite that play in the AFC Championship Game in which three officials were lead-blocking for Patrick Mahomes on a first down scramble. Or that other play when a charging back judge blocked a Bills field goal attempt.
▪ The Super Bowl Experience, dubbed “the NFL’s theme park,” opened Wednesday and runs through Saturday at New Orleans’ Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. Attractions include interactive games, player autographs, field-goal kicking, photos with the Vince Lombardi Trophy and a concussion simulator. (OK, Smirk made up that last one.)
▪ NFL turning its Pro Bowl game into flag football three years ago now seems a seed designed to grow the sport for league’s own benefit. Chiefs owner Clark Hunt foretold NFL-affiliated men’s and women’s flag leagues to reporters in New Orleans, saying, “I could envision every NFL team has their own men’s and women’s flag team that plays in the offseason and uses branding of the parent team.” Sports leads the content explosion; heck, there are pro leagues in pickleball and cornhole! So it makes ridiculous-yet-perfect sense the NFL might be planting the flag for football.
▪ The NFL for all its power cannot prevent embarrassing news from breaking during Super Bowl Week. (Google “deer antler spray,” kids.) The latest as King Sport stages its Super Tazon in New Orleans: Reports the Saints orchestrated a PR campaign on behalf of Catholic Church after published reports of predatory Catholic priests. On the bright side, the Ravens are not in the Super Bowl, so Justin Tucker’s sexual misconduct scandal at least is only a peripheral mess.
▪ Some 6,000 media members were credentialed for this Super Bowl, and most may be found haunting Sad, Sad Radio Row at the Convention Center, where TV affiliates, podcasters and America’s last few actual radio stations are set up hoping to recognize somebody to lure in as a guest. Trouble arose Wednesday as a local radio host from Hoboken, New Jersey, and a failing podcaster from Des Moines, Iowa, came to blows over first dibs to Eagles backup long-snapper Merle Snappington.
▪ Super Bowl Party Tip du Jour: What food to serve? Chicken wings? Bor-ring! Surprise and delight your guests with platters of Japanese tuna eyeballs, South African Mopane worms, Rocky Mountain oysters (bull testicles) and Cambodian fried spider.
This story was originally published February 5, 2025 at 2:45 PM.
