As the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles prepare for Super Bowl LVII at State Farm Stadium, tickets are becoming more affordable.

Since last Sunday night, the get-in price for the title game has reportedly dropped 30% from nearly $6,000 to around $4,200, per data from multiple secondary ticket markets.

An influx of ticket supply has this year’s Big Game possibly trending toward being one of the cheaper editions in recent memory.

• The inventory of tickets available increased from 2,600 on Saturday to 3,400 on Tuesday, driving prices down.
• The most recent average ticket price is $6,783 — just barely ahead of last year’s average of $6,750.
• Average prices for Sunday were around $9,000 in the immediate aftermath of the conference championship games.

This year’s game is still currently the fifth-most-expensive Super Bowl ever tracked by online marketplace TicketIQ — though it was second for most of the last week-and-a-half.

Battling Scams

The increase in supply could be related to the NFL’s renewed focus on stopping counterfeits.

The league switched to all-digital tickets at last year’s Super Bowl to combat scammers and scalpers — who may have moved to the traditional online markets.

“You can’t go to these dodgy websites and think you’re going to get legitimate tickets,” Jim Mancuso, director of the DHS’s National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, told FOS. “You need to be a smart consumer.”

Adidas’ separation from Yeezy, formerly known as Kanye West, may have a bigger fallout than initially anticipated.

The sportswear company revealed Thursday it’s expected to lose $1.3 billion in revenue and nearly $534 million in operating profit this year after ending the relationship with the rapper in October over his antisemitic comments on social media.

• The new financial guidance “accounts for the significant adverse impact from not selling the existing stock.”
• If the company doesn’t repurpose its existing Yeezy inventory and writes it off, Adidas’ operating profit would fall an additional $534 million.

Adidas also anticipates a one-off cost of up to $213 million.

“If all these effects were to materialize, the company would expect to report an operating loss of [$747 million] in 2023,” the company’s press release reads.

In October, Adidas expected that the decision to drop Ye would have a short-term hit of roughly $247 million on the company’s net income.

Rapper Royalties

Upon the termination of their relationship, Adidas immediately halted production of Yeezy-branded products and stopped all payments to Ye and his companies.

The company reportedly earned royalties of around 15% on Yeezy product sales from the partnership, which accounted for as much as 8% of Adidas’ sales, according to a report from UBS analysts.

Two groups interested in Manchester United are reportedly skeptical that the team’s current owners, the Glazer family, are open to selling the entirety of the club.

The Glazers, who purchased the team in 2005 for a reported $942 million, hired the Raine Group to oversee a full or partial sale and had set a soft deadline of Feb. 17 for parties to register their interest.

But ESPN is now reporting that the family wants to secure a partner investor rather than sell in full — despite reports last month suggesting groups who had registered interest so far were more drawn toward buying the team outright.

Club co-chairmen Joel and Avram Glazer have accepted they can’t hold on to the team without outside investment, according to ESPN.

• As of November, the club’s debt was at around $620.8 million.
• Four of the Glazer siblings have recently narrowed their shares.

The team was last valued by Forbes at $4.6 billion, but if the Glazers are open to a full takeover, bidders could be looking at a price tag closer to $7.2 billion.

Partial Partners?

Currently, the only public bid is from billionaire Jim Ratcliffe and his company INEOS. Ratcliffe, a longtime Manchester United fan, has tapped Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan to help with his bid. 

Earlier this week, it was reported that a group of Qatari investors — separate from Qatar Sports Investments — would make a full takeover bid.