The NFL promotes its own ticket exchange with the slogan, "If you want the NFL, go to the NFL." Hundreds of fans who did not heed that advice will not receive Super Bowl tickets they purchased through brokers and resale sites.
Many of the sites that have reneged on their ticket promises never had possession of the tickets when they sold them, according to ESPN.
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ESPN spoke with Daryl Kikucki, a 37-year-old regional service manager for a Seattle jet company who sold his ticket to the NFC Championship game so that he could afford to go the Super Bowl. Kikucki, a Seahawks season-ticket holder, bought a $2,100 ticket listed on SeatGeek, which had pulled the seat from a company called Prominent Tickets.
"Due to unforeseen circumstances, we have not received our normal allotment of Super Bowl inventory," read an email sent to Kikuchi. "In our 26 years of business, we have never seen a market with such limited availability to the public...If the tickets were out there, we would rather pay to fill your orders, but we can not buy tickets that do not exist."
A Patriots fan named Josh Helms said he and his friends bought six tickets two days before the AFC Championship game. Helms paid $1,650 for four tickets from one broker and $1,950 for two more from another broker.
"The guy who sold us four tickets said all he was obligated to do was give us a refund, which he did," Helms said. "And the lawyers we spoke to say that we don't my have much of a case because he did that.
"This is the first time we've had the money to go to the Super Bowl and I basically emptied out my bank account for this. This was my dream vacation and now I'm in Arizona with nothing."