By David Shim, Director, Digital Marketing
Let me start off by saying that my personal Super Bowl picks (New Orleans and New England) are no reflection on Farecast’s airfare predictions. With that said lets take a look at the experiment and the results.
Experiment:
Determine if the outcome of the NFL Conference Championship games have an impact on airline ticket prices to the Super Bowl from each team’s city. For more background view the post on January 19, 2007.
Results (as of 12:15pm PST):
New Orleans (Lost)
Before the Game: $432
After the Game: $259
% Change: -40%
Boston (Lost)
Before the Game: $430
After the Game: $344
% Change: -20%
Indianapolis (Won)
Before the Game: $414
After the Game: $575
% Change: +39%
Chicago (Won)
Before the Game: $381
After the Game: $413
% Change: +8%
Recap:
It looks as though the Super Bowl does have an impact in terms of airline ticket prices. For the losing cities, one could imagine that prices went up in anticipation of demand or hard core fans purchasing tickets in advance of the final outcome of the game. After New Orleans and Boston both lost, the demand dried up for flights to Miami.
As one would expect, prices for flights to Miami went up for the winning cities. The lowest Chicago airfare increased by 8%, while Indianapolis saw an increase of 39%. If these price increases are any indication of demand, Colts fans should be in full force SuperBowl Weekend.