High Rollers Only? The True Cost of Witnessing Super Bowl LVIII Live

The Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers are set to face off in Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas on Sunday. With the cheapest tickets priced north of $5,000 and the average ticket costing nearly $10,000, watching Super Bowl LVIII in person will cost a pretty penny. Which fanbase is better positioned to cover the costs of attending? Is it even worthwhile to go? And where are the best spots besides Allegiant Stadium for superfans to watch the Super Bowl? The answers to those questions and more can be found below. 

Who Has the Richer Fanbase?

The Kansas City and San Francisco football teams both have rich histories. The Chiefs played in Super Bowl I 57 years ago, and this will be the franchise's sixth Super Bowl appearance, with Kansas City having won three championships. The 49ers will be in their eighth Super Bowl, and San Francisco has an impressive 5-2 record over the previous seven. Both fanbases have enjoyed plenty of vicarious success on the football field in recent years, but when it comes to which team's average fan pulls in more money, it isn't particularly close. Median individual salary in San Francisco clocks in somewhere between $96,000 and $104,000 depending on the source, so we can split the difference at $100,000. Kansas City's average is closer to $60-65,000, with estimates swinging between $45,000 and $80,000 depending on the source.  

Luckily for Chiefs fans, their smaller paychecks go much further in KC thanks to a lower cost of living. Per U.S News and World Report, San Francisco ranks as the sixth-most expensive American city to live in, behind three other California cities as well as Honolulu and Miami, while Kansas City doesn't crack the top 25. Despite the high costs, San Fran has an impressive 6.8 quality of life score, ranking 45th on the same site's best places to live rankings, 28 spots ahead of Kansas City and its 6.3 quality of life score.  

Which Fanbase Travels Better?

Since Super Bowl ticket prices don't come with cost of living adjustments, 49ers fans seem better positioned to show up in force to support their team Sunday, but that isn't a foregone conclusion. When these two teams faced off in Super Bowl LIV, Chiefs fans had an estimated 63/37 edge in attendance. That game was played in Miami, so Kansas City residents benefited from a shorter commute, whereas San Francisco will have that advantage now, as a SF-Vegas flight takes about half as long as the three-hour, 10-minute flight time from KC to Vegas.  

American Airlines has made sure there will be an option available for Chiefs fans who travel to Vegas for Super Bowl Sunday, whether to attend the game in person or watch from one of Sin City's numerous casinos, sportsbooks or sports bars. In honor of the courtship between star tight end Travis Kelce and pop star Taylor Swift, American Airlines added flight AA1989 from Kansas City to Las Vegas at 12:30 p.m. CT on the Saturday before the Super Bowl, and return flight AA87 from Vegas to Kansas City at 12:20 a.m. PT on Monday after the big game. (1989 is the birth year of both Kelce and Swift, and the singer also has an album titled 1989, while 87 is Kelce's uniform number.)

Notably, the majority of Chiefs fans who attended Super Bowl LIV were from neither Kansas nor Missouri, and it's safe to say the vast majority of Super Bowl attendees among both fanbases make much more than the median salary in either city if they're willing to shell out $5-10 grand on a football game. While upper middle class Chiefs fanatics may have been willing to dip deep into their savings in February of 2020 to watch the team try to snap a 50-year championship drought, the math's a little different now, even though Super Bowl ticket prices haven't changed all that much. Between San Francisco's geographical edge in Super Bowl LVIII and some possible Super Bowl fatigue from the Chiefs fan base as Patrick Mahomes and Co. go for a third title in five years, 49ers fans are better positioned to pull off at least an even split in this rematch. 

Is Going to the Super Bowl Worth It?

This one depends first and foremost on your financial status. If you have a net worth of $100,000, shelling out 5 to 10 percent of that on tickets to a single game is hard to justify, even if your favorite team is involved. If you're a billionaire like Taylor Swift, the Super Bowl is chump change. The additional travel time involved in returning from touring in Tokyo and having to depart for Australia later in the week is a bigger potential disruption for Swift than the monetary cost of attending the game. Many football fans already consider the TV experience superior to the in-person experience when it comes to consuming the NFL, and there is the added opportunity cost for in-person attendees of missing out on the Super Bowl commercials, which are more important than the game to a not-insignificant portion of viewers. 

There are a couple points in favor of attending the Super Bowl live for the musically inclined. The halftime show is better experienced in person than on TV, though Usher may not move the needle as much in that regard in Super Bowl LVIII as, say, Rihanna did last year. Additionally, the numerous Taylor Swift superfans could be willing to shell out big money in hopes of catching a glimpse of her hanging out with Donna and Jason Kelce in a suite, as getting good seats at a Taylor Swift concert has become as expensive as going to the Super Bowl, anyway. For fans who are more about the game than the halftime show or other attendees, it's tough to justify paying up to attend the Super Bowl live unless you're quite well off or going as a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Luckily, there are plenty of prominent venues at which fans can enjoy the Super Bowl, either around Allegiant Stadium in Vegas, or in the participants' home cities. 

Best Spots to Watch Super Bowl LVIII

If you're already in Vegas or are going there to get closer to the big game, you'll have a cornucopia of watch parties to choose from. Some of the top options include Stadium Swim at Circa Resort & Casino, where you can enjoy the game from the pool on Circa's 143-foot big screen. Other big-name resorts like Caesars Palace and The Cosmopolitan will also have numerous watch parties going on, and there's no shortage of sportsbooks, sports bars, and other exciting venues where fans can take in the game in Vegas without shelling out thousands of dollars to get inside Allegiant Stadium. 

San Francisco-based 49ers fans will also have no shortage of options to choose from if they are looking to meet up with others of their ilk to enjoy the game from the Bay Area. Almost every bar, club, and establishment with a TV will have the game on, but the official 49ers watch party will be at Thrive City. Tickets will be available starting Thursday, Feb. 8, and the watch party itself will run from 2-8 p.m. PT. The 49ers will also have official watch parties for international fans in Monterrey, Mexico and Leeds, United Kingdom. 

Kansas City also has no shortage of watch party options, and Chiefs fans are in luck, as a $50 ticket to enjoy the official Chiefs watch party alongside Chiefs alumni at J. Rieger and Co. costs less than the $60 ticket to the watch party at the local Dave and Buster's. Football is generally a much larger part of the culture in Kansas City than San Francisco, but both cities will be buzzing for the Big Game on Sunday, and you'll find even more die hard fans at local watch parties and bars than among the exclusive attendees at Allegiant Stadium.

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