We previously discussed Whitney Tilson’s desire to go to the Super Bowl – below is his latest email to “investors” in which he describes his journey to the Super Bowl with his (female – we guess his wife is cool with that) assistant and scalps tickets (is that legal?) for the game. Presented without further comment…
What a score at the Super Bowl yesterday!
I was planning to take my assistant, Kelli, who grew up in Denver and is a huge Broncos fan, to the AFC championship game in Denver two weeks ago, but our flight was cancelled due to the blizzard so we rescheduled for the Super Bowl
We flew in yesterday morning without tickets (only a sign – see pic 1), hoping to get lucky, but things were looking grim as there was a frenzy for tickets and prices were going up, not down. But then we got really lucky: we stopped by the tent of Vivid Seats (a competitor to StubHub) and they were closing down, but the woman running it had one great ticket (lower level, 40 yard line – see the view from her seat in pic 4) and sold it to us at ~40% less than similar tickets were selling online (apparently, single tickets can be hard to sell at the last minute, so the seller was motivated), so we grabbed it! Kelli was so happy she was crying (see pic 2)!
After I walked her to the stadium – (pic 3), I hung around looking for another deal, but there were a ton of buyers everywhere and the guy at the StubHub tent said prices were continuing to go up so there likely weren’t going to be any good deals – and I didn’t care enough about going to the game to pay up – so I hopped in a taxi and met my cousin and his family at their sports club where we watched the game on a big screen (and went swimming and hot tubbing at halftime) (pic 5).
And in a totally random coincidence, the guy who was MC’ing the party there looked vaguely familiar – and then I realized that he’s the starter at all Tough Mudder races, who gives an inspiring speech to every wave of runners (pic 7 is from the Mt. Snow race last June), so I saw him three times last year! We had a great conversation (pic 6) and I’ll see him 5-7x this year, as I’ve bought a TM unlimited pass for 2016.
We were on a 9:48pm redeye home, which ended up being tight for Kelli (as you can imagine, it was a nightmare getting an Uber and fighting through traffic after the game), but she made it with 10 minutes to spare and we just got home a few hours ago.
Quite a 22-hour adventure!
PS–So when I gave up at 3pm yesterday and hopped a taxi to watch the Super Bowl with my cousin, it was because the price on StubHub was high and rising (to $3,600 for the worst seat in the stadium, up from $2,850 the day before and $3,000 Sunday morning) and the guy at the StubHub tent told me it was highly unlikely that there would be any cheap tickets, even if I waited until kickoff half an hour later.
How wrong he was…
A buddy of mine gave his two seats to his dad and brother and then hung out with a friend near the main entrance at an open-air market where most of the scalpers were. He said that right until kickoff, the prices remained high (over $5,000/ticket for a decent seat), but right after kickoff they suddenly dropped and he was able to buy a great pair from a professional scalper for $2,500 each (section 117 – on the 40-yard line, one section lower/closer to the field than Kelli’s great seat).
I have no regrets, but a good lesson to keep in mind for future events!
