This week we have what used to be the Phoenix Open Golf Tournament, now the FBR Open (don’t ask me what FBR stands for), played in Scottsdale and at the same time we have the Super Bowl played in Glendale on Feb. 3. Needless to say, they expect a few more visitors here than normal. The golf tournament doesn’t have as much impact on prices as the Super Bowl does, but I do think some people might think they are being taken advantage of. Here are a few statistics, before the games start and definitely not sports related:
- Face value of a ticket for the Super Bowl: Starting at around $700. Price from a scalper (yep, legal here in Arizona) Starting at $3500 and up to around $20,000. Some tickets packages include parking.
- Parking space on game day: $60, away from the stadium
- Percentage of stadium parking lot taken up by “Super Bowl Experience”: 80%
- Amount you can spend at the “Super Bowl Experience”: unlimited
- Cost of roundtrip airfare from Boston for Super Bowl weekend: $2700. Normal cost of trip any other time: under $400
- Cost of cheap hotel room for Super Bowl weekend: $399 a night, four-day minimum. Normal cost of cheap hotel room any other time: $79 a night
- Cost of a “nice” hotel room for Super Bowl weekend: $999 a night, four-day minimum. Normal cost of a nice hotel room any other time: around $200 to $300 a night
- Cost of a really upscale hotel room for Super Bowl weekend: up to $20,000 a night, four-day minimum. Normal cost of an upscale hotel room any other time: around $1000 to $2000 a night
- Amount the street-side signs say I can make if I rent my house out for Super Bowl weekend: $3,000 a day. Cost of mental stress, repairing damage and replacing missing items due to renters Super Bowl parties: more than it’s worth taking the risk for.
- Cost of renting a limo this week: $4000 for 10 hours. Normal cost of renting a limo, $200 an hour, four hours minimum
- Cost of a hotdog or a beer at either event: I don’t know, but I’m guessing somewhere between $5 and $10
- Cost of parking your jet at one of the outlying airports: I don’t know, there aren’t any spaces available; just about every golf pro has their own jet, and both events bring in hundreds of corporate jets.
- Economic impact to the Phoenix area from both events: around $65,000,000 and now you can see why.
- Amount of time we'll spend at home: From about Thursday through the following Tuesday in hopes that they'll all have gone home by then.wall1 wall1