Ticket prices are heating up for Saturday night’s prized playoff game between the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers — the cheapest price for a single ticket is about $400.
Online ticket exchanges are predicting it will set the benchmark for record prices for a wild card game, as several factors prop up the market.
The Bears and Packers rivalry is among the oldest in the league. It’s only the third time the franchises have faced off in the playoffs, and it’s been nearly a decade since the Bears last hosted a playoff game at Soldier Field.
“When you have a storied rivalry, one that’s considered among the most iconic in all of football, combined with the playoff drought Bears fans have endured and the unexpected turnaround this season, it’s a recipe for record-high demand,” Kyle Zorn, content director at online ticketing platform TickPick, said.
The Bears last hosted a playoff game in 2018. It was a crushing 16-15 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in the waning seconds in the wild card round, after Cody Parker missed a 43-yard field goal that clanked off the uprights twice, before falling short. The kick is painfully known in Bears lore as the “double doink.”
Record prices
On TickPick, the third matchup since December between the North Division rivals is the most expensive NFL wild card game. It’s also the priciest Bears home game since the New York City-based online marketplace launched in 2011.
The lowest get-in cost was hovering around $450 midweek, with an average selling price of $813, according to data from TickPick
That’s $380 more than the second-priciest wild card matchup between the San Francisco 49ers and the Philadelphia Eagles. The average ticket price for that game is $433.
The most expensive seat on TickPick for the Bears game sold for $2,779, a transaction that included a trio of tickets totaling $8,337 for Section 136, Row 12, a prime section at the 50 yard line.
The matchup is also the most in-demand ticket of the wild card round on Vivid Seats, with an average ticket price of $755, according to a spokesperson with the Chicago-based marketplace. The lowest admission was $477 per ticket. Meanwhile, the average price for this weekend’s 49ers-Eagles game is $428, Vivid Seats said.
Attendance, unsurprisingly, should heavily favor the Bears, with TickPick reporting 57.1% of purchases tied to Illinois ZIP codes and only 8.9% from Wisconsin ZIP codes.
According to Vivid Seats Fan Forecast, Bears fans will account for 94% of attendance.
Chicago ticket brokers still wary
Immediately after the matchups were set Sunday, some Bears fans dashed to buy $500 upper level seats that night from Tickets First Class in Wrigleyville.
“There was a huge rush,” Tickets First Class owner Drew DeMoss said. “I was a little surprised that people were so anxious and didn’t want to wait and see what was going to happen with the market. They just wanted to go to bed with tickets in their account.”
Lower level seats with Ticket First are in the $800 range, and the first row behind the Bears bench cost about $2,500, the most expensive available.
DeMoss declined to speculate on secondary market prices in the run-up to Saturday.
“I don’t like to predict,” he said. “It’s like an airline ticket. You never know.”
A Chicago Sun-Times survey Wednesday afternoon of ticket prices on StubHub ranged from $402 for a ticket in Section 429, the upper level of the stadium, to $5,970 for one in Section 209. A few tickets in the 100-level sections were listed as low as $676. For group rates, an executive suite in Level C was selling for $54,933.
Westchester-based ticket broker Steve Buzil expects the market to cool before game time. He predicts higher-end tickets will fall 30% to 40%, while lower-end seats remain steady or even increase, as more Packers fans enter the market.
He said many corporate clients often prefer weekday games, and families often have other plans, factors that could create less demand for pricier tickets despite the high interest in Saturday night’s game.
“There will be a correction,” Buzil said.
Buzil, founder of SitClose, has been buying and selling sports and concert tickets for 35 years and primarily caters to corporate customers.
Another broker, who asked not to be identified, said sellers are outnumbering buyers at a 5-to-1 clip as some Bears season ticket holders aim to cash in.
If the Bears win, brokers expect those tickets to be the priciest in the next playoff round, as the team will host another home game.
Some fans, brokers said, also opted to skip the wild card game altogether, angling to acquire tickets in the divisional round when the stakes — and costs — are even higher.
“If the Bears advance, any future matchup would likely be among the most in-demand games of that round, given how hungry fans are for a playoff run,” Zorn said.
The Bears last home playoff victory was in 2011 against the Seattle Seahawks. The following week they lost the NFC Championship at Soldier Field to the Packers, who won the Super Bowl that year.
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