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Super Bowl I Ticket

The MMQB presents NFL 95, a special project—unveiled every Wednesday, from May through July—detailing 95 artifacts that tell the story of the NFL, as the league prepares to enter its 95th season. See the entire series here.

How much has the Super Bowl grown since that first AFL-NFL Championship in 1967? A new car and a new home today cost roughly 11 times what they would have back then, when you could snatch a sedan and a place in the ’burbs for about $30,000, total. A Super Bowl ticket today, however—average 2014 price: $2,645—costs 260 times the median offering at Super Bowl I in Los Angeles, $10 dollars, and even that was apparently too expensive. Despite ticket prices of $6, $10, and $12, more than 30,000 seats at the Los Angeles Coliseum went empty for the “world championship.”  

And look at the game now, all grown up. The Super Bowl is broadcast in 230 countries and 34 languages. It’s a metaphor for the ultimate event in any field. Every year, it's the highest-rated television program in America. And, well, it’s the Super Bowl of advertising. And finally, this year, it became a cultural and political bargaining chip, with the league making overtures that it would take a planned Super Bowl away from Arizona were it to pass a bill which, had it not been vetoed, would have allowed business to refuse service to gay, lesbian and transgender customers. Turns out $10 can go a long way.

—Robert Klemko

Photograph courtesy of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

The crowd went wild when Max McGee scored in the first quarter of Super Bowl I. (Neil Leifer/Sports Illustrated)

The crowd went wild when Max McGee scored in the first quarter of Super Bowl I. (Neil Leifer/Sports Illustrated)

NFL 95: Read the Series

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