Glad I bought my plane ticket BEFORE the Jets game
Pats fans learn: Money’s the evil for all rooters
By Jay Fitzgerald
Boston Herald General Economics Reporter
Tuesday, January 9, 2007 - Updated: 07:20 AM EST
Devoted New England Patriots [team stats] fans are going to have put their money where their mouths are if they expect to see their NFL heroes play the Chargers in sunny San Diego this coming weekend.
Upper-deck tickets for the Divisional Playoff game on Sunday at Qualcomm Stadium were going for about $235 late yesterday afternoon on online sites, rising from $200 earlier in the day.
A 40-yard-line seat rose to $1,270 late in the day, from about $1,000.
Club seats in San Diego were going for anywhere between $1,500 and $3,500, depending on location of booths within the stadium.
Meanwhile, a roundtrip, nonstop plane ticket between Boston and San Diego was going for as high as $1,800 yesterday.
Some round-trip plane tickets were available in the $400 range - as long as fans didn’t mind taking red-eye flights with connections.
Travel agents reported plane tickets had become harder to find as the day progressed.
Sam Comerchero, director of operations at Brighton’s Target Sport Adventures, said fans calling up his agency were mostly “kicking tires” to determine if they could afford a trip west.
But he said whether the Pats, who advanced in the playoffs after beating the New York Jets [team stats] this past Sunday, will travel all the way to the West Coast with a lot of fans in tow, is still under review.
“It’s going to be hard (to go) on a whim,” Comerchero said.
One advantage is that San Diego is not a big football town, experts say. Similar nosebleed upper-deck tickets at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro would probably start at about $500, Comerchero estimated.
Yesterday, he was offering game packages - which included a game ticket, airline flights and two nights at a Doubletree Hotel - for between $1,300 and $1,500.
Jay Smith, president of Sports Travel and Tours Inc. in Hatfield, said his firm was offering a no-frills $600 package that included an upper-deck game ticket, transport to and from the airport and one night at a hotel - but no airline ticket.
“That’s a good, solid price,” he said.
A good rule-of-thumb for any traveling fan is to buy a ticket early if the price is affordable for their budget. “Very rarely do prices go down,” Smith said of NFL playoff games.
