Tom Brady’s return to New England is already on pace to set a record NFL ticket price
When the NFL’s 2021 regular-season schedule was released, it was the monumental exclamation point on the slate. After only a few days, it’s now one of the biggest dollar signs a regular-season NFL ticket has ever seen.
The Oct. 3 tilt that returns Tom Brady to Gillette Stadium to face his former coach Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots on a Sunday night is already pushing astronomical prices on the secondary market. While it’s not quite Super Bowl levels, the secondary market prices for the Brady-Belichick reunion is already unprecedented for a regular-season game. According to multiple ticket brokers across major platforms and online marketplaces, the first wave of “get in” pricing for the game — which tracks the cheapest tickets to gain entry to a stadium — pushed Brady’s Foxborough return to the richest initial pricing in history: Anywhere from $1,400 to $1,500 for the worst seats in the house.
TicketIQ founder Jesse Lawrence said that initial price was nearly double the next most expensive game, which is the Sept. 13 home opener for the Las Vegas Raiders, a Monday night game against the Baltimore Ravens. That Raider opener initially priced out at roughly $800 per “get-in” ticket in the first wave.
The Raiders were again checking as the hottest overall ticket in the NFL, just as they were before last season’s pandemic cancellations. According to TicketIQ data, the Raiders’ average pricing for their cheapest secondary market ticket in 2021 started off at $373. The next nearest team was the Patriots at $245.
These ticket prices will fluctuate as inventory either disappears or becomes more readily available. The “get in” pricing for Brady’s fell to $1,100 by Thursday night on some platforms — which multiple brokers said is still a record pace for a regular-season NFL game. With months left until Brady’s return to New England, prices will rise and fall but there’s little question that when the regular season kicks off and October approaches, one of the most hyped games in NFL history will also have its shot to dwarf the price tag of every regular-season matchup that has ever come before it.
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