Some Season Ticket Holders Want Lottery Transparency From The Broncos
By Jeff Todd
DENVER (CBS4) - The secondary market for Super Bowl tickets is on fire, and season ticket holders are not pleased with the organization after very few reported winning the ticket Lottery.
"They started calling last night, 'We won the lottery! We won the lottery!' Or, the other people (say),'We want to go to the game!' So it was just crazy," Candy Lewis said.
Lewis runs A Lewis Tickets, a small operation that prides itself on only selling season ticket holders' tickets on the secondary market. Monday afternoon prices on websites were around $4,000.
"Face value you're looking at $850-plus per ticket with some service fees. It can get very expensive," Lewis said about the cheapest ticket available to lottery winners.
Those who won the lottery have until Tuesday night at 5 p.m. to pay the Broncos and then will pick up the tickets on Wednesday at 9 a.m. Lewis says after the giveaway on Wednesday the secondary market will stabilize.
"They're very special folks that won the lottery because we've heard from a ton this morning that said, 'We didn't win,'" Lewis said.
CBS4 heard from season ticket holders who found out about lottery results for the first time by email just a few hours after the AFC Championship ended. The Broncos told CBS4 they have 23,000 season ticket accounts.
"A percentage of our limited ticket allotment was distributed to season ticket holders by a computer-generated lottery system weighted by season ticket tenure," said a statement to CBS4.
"My father bought the tickets back in 1961," said Douglas Pooley. "The email says you're not lucky enough but if you go to PrimeSports, our official partner, you can buy packages starting at $4,000 and up."
Pooley said he doesn't know any other season ticket holders that won the lottery. He wants transparency from the organization.
It's estimated the organization was given about 12,000 tickets by the NFL. The Broncos told CBS4, "We don't have the number of tickets provided to our season ticket holders but it's a percentage of our total allotment as required by the NFL."
Jeff Todd joined the CBS4 team in 2011 covering the Western Slope in the Mountain Newsroom. Since 2015 he's been working across the Front Range in the Denver Headquarters. Follow him on Twitter @CBS4Jeff.
