Posted: Aug. 19, 2009

It turns out Brett Favre can do more than throw a football.

He can move markets as well.

“He’s like the Alan Greenspan of sports,” said Sean Pate, a spokesman for StubHub, a national secondary ticket seller. “Things turn whenever he makes a move.”

Like the former Federal Reserve chairman acting on interest rates, Favre’s decision to sign with the Minnesota Vikings on Tuesday set off changes in the secondary ticket market that sent ticket prices for the two meetings between the Minnesota Vikings and the Green Bay Packers sky-high.

The two teams will first meet Oct. 5 in Minneapolis for a Monday night game. On Nov. 1, the two teams will meet again at Lambeau Field. With Favre presumably at quarterback for the Vikings, fan interest in what is already a huge rivalry will enter a new dimension.

“When I came into work Tuesday morning, I was selling that Nov. 1 game for $170 apiece,” said Fred Benz of Ticket King, a local ticket broker. “At the end of the day, it was $325.”

It wasn’t just single-game tickets that were affected by Favre’s move to the Twin Cities. As of noon Wednesday, the Vikings had sold more than 3,000 season tickets and more than 10,000 single-game tickets, according to Steve LaCroix, vice president of sales and marketing for the Vikings.

“Obviously, that’s a moving target with each passing day,” LaCroix said.

On its Web site, the Vikings were hawking Favre merchandise, as was NFLShop.com. It’s easy to understand why: Favre’s jersey – the Packers, Jets and Vikings versions – is the biggest selling NFL jersey of all time. From April 1, 2008, to March 31 of this year, Favre’s jersey was the biggest seller on NFLShop.com.

And now that Favre has joined his fourth team in his long career – he started out as an Atlanta Falcon – a new set of football fans are likely to pay up to wear a purple No. 4.

Nationally, StubHub reported that Tuesday was the highest grossing sales day for the company for both Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers tickets.

“Throughout the day, we saw a surge in ticket sales for every Vikings game this upcoming season,” Pate said. And there was also a surge for Packers tickets for the Nov. 1 matchup, he added.

The majority of Packers sales were for the Nov. 1 game, Pate said. The average ticket selling price at StubHub was $343 on Wednesday afternoon. The most expensive ticket sold was $1,148 for a 50-yard-line seat. It was purchased by a fan who lives in Dunedin, Fla.

Even the expensive seats got more expensive. Damian Scribner, the president of Blue Chip Hospitality Group, was shopping online a 20-person VIP suite at Lambeau for the Nov. 1 game. The asking price? $22,750.

That’s the asking price. You can ask, but the price will likely go up at least another $5,000, Scribner said. Scribner said fans from around the country had inquired about subleasing the suite for the game. The suiteholder, Scribner said, cannot attend the game.

Normally, suites at Lambeau Field lease for $57,000 to $140,000 a season, plus the cost of individual game tickets. The face value of a suite game ticket is $72. Broken down by game, that means the most expensive suite with 20 tickets would cost a suiteholder a total of $15,440.

Many Packers season-ticket holders were offering their seats to the Nov. 1 game at Ticketmaster, which is the National Football League’s official ticket exchange. By Wednesday afternoon, there were hundreds of seats for sale for the game, ranging in price from $330 to $5,000 a ticket, depending on seat location. A 50-yard line seat was going from $600 to $1,231 a seat.

Mike Holzberger of Connections Ticket Service said the Favre hype was in high gear. But he cautioned that things can change very quickly in the secondary ticket market.

“If Favre gets hurt or something happens, I mean, the guy is nearly 40 years old,” Holzberger said. “If he gets hurt and can’t play, those tickets will drop 75% in a day.”

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