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