There are three ways to get to see this year’s Super Bowl: be a player for the Denver Broncos, be a player for the Seattle Seahawks, or make as much money as one of those players. The “cheap seats” as of this writing are going for over $2,400 on StubHub (that’ll get you into the upper end zone, where you are 100% certain to freeze to death by kickoff).

Ticket prices for the Big Game have been rising for years, but Super Bowl XLVIII is on pace to be the most expensive ever. It will be the first outdoor, cold weather event in recent memory, making it something of a novelty. It will be held at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ—population-dense and proximate to New York City. It’s on Groundhog Day. It may be Peyton Manning’s last game. And it will put the self-anointed greatest-corner-in-history and social-media-punching-bag-du-jour, Richard Sherman, back on the field for the first time since his bizarre rant following the NFC Championship. All this, combined with the escalating blinginess of the event, has driven ticket prices skyward.

NFLOnLocation.com, which purveys authentic NFL ticket packages, has a Game Day ticketing option that includes sideline, corner or end zone seat, pre-and post game refreshments, and a souvenir program and lanyard (and who isn’t a sucker for a lanyard?) for the low low price of $7,299 per. If you want to add in a hotel room, that’ll ring up $9,199. Parking isn’t included in either option and will cost at least $200 from a separate vendor. eBay currently has some tickets for sale around $500,000, but with free shipping.

The NY/NJ Super Bowl Host Committee expects the game will bring upwards of 400,000 visitors to the area (MetLife Stadium has a seating capacity of 82,566). The NYC metro area is readying for the crowds with a variety of entertainment options, including free concerts, two-for-one tickets for Broadway, and something called a “football fashion show.”

For what it’s worth, the cost of a high end seat for Super Bowl I was $12. That’s 0.5% of what a cheap seat would go for at Super Bowl XLVIII.

Image via Wikimedia Commons