Super Bowl tickets too expensive for fans, lawsuit says

NEWARK, N.J. -- A New Jersey man has sued the National Football League, accusing it of pricing average football fans out of the Super Bowl.

Josh Finkelman, of New Brunswick, says the NFL only made 1 percent of all tickets available to the public for purchase at face value. He says that means most fans must buy their tickets on the secondary market, where they can command thousands of dollars.

Finkelman's lawsuit was filed Monday in federal court in Newark. It claims the NFL is violating the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act.

Lawyer Bruce Nagel says the lawsuit is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.

The NFL says it is reviewing the suit. It notes that three-quarters of the game's tickets are given to teams, which sell them at face value to fans who win lotteries.

In September, the NFL said it expected the most expensive tickets for its championship game will be about $2,600 each for 9,000 premium seats for the Feb. 2 game at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.

That's more than twice the $1,250 cost for similar tickets at last season's Super Bowl in New Orleans.

The next tier of seats is expected to go for $1,500 compared to $950 in New Orleans. About 40 percent of general admission seats will be under $1,000, McCarthy said.

By contrast, tickets for the very first Super Bowl in 1967 topped out at $12.