Retail Latin America: Cowboys And Steelers Host Most Expensive Games Of NFL Wild Card Weekend

2015/01/05

Cowboys And Steelers Host Most Expensive Games Of NFL Wild Card Weekend

Forbes Staff

The NFL playoffs start up on Saturday with a pair of wild-card games. The first game kicks off at 4:35 and features the NFC South champion Carolina Panthers, who finished with a record of 7-8-1, hosting the Arizona Cardinals, who lost their final two games to end the season 11-5. It marks the first NFL playoff game ever broadcast on ESPN . The Worldwide Leader secured the rights to host one wild-card game per season in 2011 as part of the eight-year, $15.2 billion contract extension it signed with the NFL.

The Panthers are only the fourth NFL team to make the postseason with a losing record. The first two were in the strike shortened 1982 season when the Cleveland Browns and Detroit Lions both qualified with 4-5 records and got smoked in their opening games by the then Los Angeles Raiders and Washington Redskins, respectively. The 2010 Seattle Seahawks were the only team to qualify under a 16 game schedule and to host a playoff game before this year’s Panthers. The Seahawks upset the New Orleans Saints in the game that launched “Beast Mode” onto the national scene.

Jerry Jones and the Cowboys are seeking only their second playoff win since the 1996 season.

This is only the third playoff game the Panthers have hosted in the past nine seasons (they lost the previous two), but fans aren’t exactly banging down the doors to get into Bank of America Stadium for it. The median ticket price is $89 for Saturday’s game, according to ticket re-seller Vivid Seats. It is the cheapest ticket of the NFL playoff’s opening weekend. The next cheapest is the Cincinnati Bengals at the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday at 1:05. The median price at Lucas Oil Stadium is $112 as of Friday.

The Dallas Cowboys and Pittsburgh Steelers are two of the NFL’s most storied franchises and each appeared in a record eight Super Bowls, winning 11 combined. The two division winners are hosting the two most expensive games of the weekend with the median price to get into the Cowboy’s AT&T Stadium at $195 and the Steelers’ game at Heinz Field costing $175. The Steelers continue their grudge match with the Baltimore Ravens in an 8:15 kickoff on Saturday on NBC. The Cowboys, who are the NFL’s most valuable team at $3.2 billion, host the Detroit Lions Sunday at 4:40 on Fox.

Ticket prices will climb as we get deeper into the NFL playoff games. Potential conference championship games in Denver and Seattle are currently selling around $750 with the average topping $1,000 for the Broncos (see table below). We are still two weeks away from determining the Super Bowl participants, but the secondary ticket market for the Big Game is heating up. The median price for a Super Bowl ticket is currently at $3,390 with the average price at $4,034, according to Vivid.