Super Bowl luxury suite going for $1 million: Report

Looking to keep warm at the Super Bowl could set you back a few bucks this year.

High-end Super Bowl suite prices hit the $1 million mark Monday — with frigid weather expected to push demand for the comfy indoor rooms at MetLife Stadium even higher.

An optimistic seller listed a luxurious climate-controlled suite for the Feb. 2 Seahawks-Broncos showdown at $1,019,000 on the secondary ticket market, and plenty of other sellers came in above the $500,000 mark, reported the N.Y. Post.

Many of the asking prices for Super Bowl XLVIII suites are double those of prior Super Bowls, which commanded $100,000 to $500,0000, market watchers said.

“The weather is a big factor,’’ Connor Gregoire, spokesman for Seatgeek.com, said of the sky-high prices for indoor seats. “It’s going to be cold, and being inside comes at a higher price.’’

An early forecast for the 6:30 p.m. EST  kickoff is for temperatures near the freezing mark.

Suite asking prices also are being driven by limited availability.

MetLife Stadium has 220 total suites, which go for about $350,000 a season, but about a third of the rooms were held off the market by NFL and Super Bowl brass, who sell them to sponsors or other high-rollers for upwards of $400,000.

The suites hold between 12 and 30 people, and include catering, bars, televisions, fireplaces, parking passes and pre-game party access.

The cheapest suite price among online sellers Monday was $318,000 for a room in the upper “nosebleed” area; most sellers were asking at least $500,000.

Even non-suite ticket offerings hit historic highs Monday. The asking price for the cheapest seat in the stadium was $2,096 on the secondary market. Face value for those seats is between $800 and $850.

The average ticket asking price was about $4,015.

New Jersey left off cover of official NJ/NY Super Bowl XLVIII program

New Jersey is used to the late-night barbs about its Turnpike, swamps, smells and personalities from Tony Soprano to Chris Christie, but this slight might be the biggest insult of all. And Jerseyites are hotter than a Rutt's Hut ripper about it.

On Monday, after the NFL unveiled the program cover for Super Bowl XLVIII, to be played at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on Feb. 2,  the cover image chosen by the NFL is... New York City.

Down the stretch of one of the state's most visible events ever, this omission comes as an indirect slap in the face to the area that will do a bulk of the heavy lifting — security, transportation and maybe snow removal.  Through it all, the blue collar Garden State still stands in the shadow of the glittery Manhattan skyline except, if you look closely at the cover, the tip of Jersey City sneaks into the shot.

New Jersey's Star-Ledger has launched a photoshop challenge to get proud New Jerseyans, to fix this abomination. You can download their template, fix the image and either upload it to them or tweet it using the hashtag #superjersey.

The publication will compile the best images into an upcoming video and present "appropriate Jersey-centric prize" to the creator of the best submission.

It's a small consolation to a "NJ/NY Super Bowl" co-operative that was one-sided all along— as in the other side of the Hudson River.

Commemorative Super Bowl MetroCards available at NYC subway stations

Lucky New York City subway riders might be able to find pieces of Super Bowl memorabilia at their MetroCard vending machines starting this week.

In conjunction with the New York/New Jersey Super Bowl Host Committee, 1 million commemorative MetroCards will be on sale at about 400 subway stations until Feb. 3.

There are four card designs featuring the Super Bowl XLVIII logo, each with a unique front, and a message on the back reading, “Together, the National Football League and the New York/New Jersey Super Bowl Host Committee are bringing the greatest game to the greatest region.”

"There's no better region to host the Super Bowl and no better way to celebrate and promote that fact than by saying it on a MetroCard," MTA spokesman Paul Fleuranges said in a statement.

That and $2.75 will get you a ride on the A-train.

The MTA began distributing the commemorative MetroCards earlier this week. The cards were designed and purchased by the Super Bowl Host Committee.

But getting one of the cards from a vending machine is just a matter of random chance, the MTA said.

“The cards are added to an existing supply of standard MetroCards, so there is no guarantee that purchasing there will result in the acquisition of a card featuring the Super Bowl design,” said MTA spokesman David Ortiz.

Although the game will be played at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, New York City will host several events in the weeks leading up to the Feb. 2 game.

Fan sues NFL for more affordable Super Bowl tickets: Report

Just as Super Bowl XLVIII tickets start trickling into the marketplace, a New Jersey man — who shelled out $4,000 to a ticket reseller for two seats to the Super Bowl at MetLife Stadium — filed a lawsuit against the National Football League alleging the league makes it too hard for the average fan to buy tickets for the big game.

Josh Finkelman — and his lawyer — believe that he was forced to spend far too much money for his tickets, because they claim the NFL — who will rake in millions of dollars of revenue from the event — has made just 1 percent of Super Bowl seats available to the general public at face value, reports nj.com.

They claim limiting the availability of tickets was a greedy and clear violation of a provision found in New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act entitled "withholding tickets from sale, prohibited amount." Yesterday, they sued the NFL in federal court in Newark, levying a class action lawsuit with potentially far-reaching implications that attempts to fold in a giant cross-section of disgruntled fans.

Talk about David vs. Goliath.

NJ.com reported:

While it’s too early to determine the suit’s possible success, the stakes outlined in it appear to be sky high: Bruce Nagel, Finkelman’s lawyer, claims the triple damages sought in the suit could add up to hundreds of millions of dollars. And the 15-page legal document says it’s on behalf of all ticket buyers who have paid more than face amount for their tickets, along with anybody who couldn’t afford to buy tickets in an exorbitant secondary market, but who still wanted them.

"Read the provisions (of the New Jersey statute), they are clear as day," Nagel said yesterday in an interview. "The NFL just blew it. They just didn’t get the fact that there’s law in New Jersey that prohibits what they are doing."

He added, "I don’t think the NFL denies the fact that the Average Joe has no access to the tickets. … They hold a lottery where the general public gets 1 percent."

The NFL, for its part, issued a statement yesterday that read, "Our lawyers will review the complaint and respond accordingly."

Meanwhile, the pertinent subsection of the statute states, "It shall be an unlawful practice for a person, who has access to tickets to an event prior to the tickets’ release for sale to the general public, to withhold those tickets from sale to the general public in an amount exceeding 5% of all available seating for the event."

In essence, alleges Finkelman and Nagel, the NFL was required to make 95 percent of the MetLife Super Bowl tickets available to the public — which they say does not include season-ticket-holders — at face value.

According to the NFL, the league doles out Super Bowl tickets as follows: The two teams that make the Super Bowl share 35 percent of the tickets; the host teams – this year the Giants and Jets – share 6.2 percent of the tickets; the remaining 28 teams share more than 33 percent of the tickets; and the NFL retains 25 percent of them.

Nagel says he reached the 1 percent figure by relying on "a widely adopted number reached by many independent analyses that have been done," but did not elaborate.

Blimps will be grounded at MetLife Super Bowl due to weather

Long associated with the biggest sporting events in America — airships, blimps, zeppelins or whatever your generation calls them — will most likely not be sailing over MetLife Stadium during Super Bowl XLVIII in February.

So don't expect to see Snoopy —or Goodyear or DirecTV for that matter — hovering above the festivities during the game because none of the ubiquitous lighter-than-air crafts wants to do battle with Mother Nature in the middle of winter.

The Star-Ledger reports:

Greg Poppenhouse, chief pilot for Goodyear, almost shivers at the thought of flying over East Rutherford on Groundhog Day.
"We won’t have a blimp up there," he said of the upcoming Super Bowl. "We put our ship in the hangar in the winter."
It’s not so much the cold that worries Poppenhouse, but what typically accompanies it during New Jersey winters.
Flying through a rainstorm in the summer can suddenly add 400 pounds of weight to a blimp, he noted. In the winter, though, that precipitation turns into snow and freezing rain, which can accumulate on the wide expanse of an airship’s helium gas envelope, adding enough weight to quickly give a blimp the flying characteristics of a brick.

Not even MetLife, whose name is emblazoned on the stadium that is home to the Jets and Giants, will chance its two U.S.-based airships — Snoopy One and Snoopy Two — to the whims of the Jersey winter on Super Bowl Sunday this February.

"They won’t be there," said MetLife spokesman Shane Winn. "Even if the weather was fairly decent, usually by mid-November both Snoopy One and Snoopy Two are put on a program that keeps them to largely warm-weather states."

The white-and-blue Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield blimp, which is based in New Jersey during the summer months, will be grounded by then as well, officials say, hibernating during the winter — like most other blimps who go south — in North Carolina unless the airship is leased by another company.

With flight restrictions in place since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the blimp may not be the only thing not in action in the skies over MetLife Stadium on game day. The Federal Aviation Administration said there will be temporary flight restrictions on jets and small aircraft put in place as well.

So kiss those live sweeping shots of the Manhattan skyline goodbye.

Farmer's Almanac predicts snowstorm during NY/NJ Super Bowl

The Farmers' Almanac usually isn't the first publication you check out when you're sizing up the Super Bowl but — with this year's big game being held outside in a cold weather location for the first time — it might be more important than any NFL guide.

That is if you believe the 197-year-old publication's prediction that a winter storm will hit the Northeast the weekend of Feb. 2 — when Super Bowl XLVIII will be played outdoors at MetLife Stadium in the Meadowlands in New Jersey.

The publication — which hits newsstands Monday — is using words like "piercing cold," ''bitterly cold" and "biting cold" to describe the upcoming winter. And if its predictions are correct, the first outdoor Super Bowl in years will be a messy blizzard.

 It also predicts a colder-than-normal winter for two-thirds of the country and heavy snowfall in the Midwest, Great Lakes and New England.

"We're using a very strong four-letter word to describe this winter, which is C-O-L-D. It's going to be very cold," said Sandi Duncan, managing editor.

Green Bay and Buffalo fans must laughing in their long johns.

Based on planetary positions, sunspots and lunar cycles, the almanac's secret formula is largely unchanged since founder David Young published the first almanac in 1818.

Modern scientists don't put much stock in sunspots or tidal action, but the almanac says its forecasts used by readers to plan weddings and plant gardens are correct about 80 percent of the time.

Last year, the forecast called for cold weather for the eastern and central U.S. with milder temperatures west of the Great Lakes. It started just the opposite but ended up that way.

Caleb Weatherbee, the publication's elusive prognosticator, said he was off by only a couple of days on two of the season's biggest storms: a February blizzard that paralyzed the Northeast with 3 feet of snow in some places and a sloppy storm the day before spring's arrival that buried parts of New England.

The Maine-based Farmers' Almanac, not to be confused with the New Hampshire-based Old Farmer's Almanac, which will be published next month, features a mix of jokes, gardening tips and home remedies.

Now, instead of cures for runny noses, maybe it will come up with a way for New York and New Jersey to keep buses and trains from coming to a standstill. 

NFL has plans to move up or delay Super Bowl 2014 in event of snow storm

All of those nine-to-fivers — who wish the Super Bowl was played on Saturday instead of Sunday — just might get their wish next February if Mother Nature has anything to say about it.  Big Mama and the NFL, that is.

The NFL, in preparation of a winter storm during the 2014 New York/New Jersey Super Bowl, has laid out an "extensive contingency plan," according to a report in SportsBusiness Journal, to prevent a nor'easter like the recent Nemo storm from derailing the game at MetLife Stadium.

The league has gone as far as considering the possibility of playing the game on Saturday, Feb. 1, or even delaying its first outdoor, cold-weather Super Bowl several days if the weather forecast is ominous, said the report.

"We have to look at all the angles: storm arriving day-of-game, storm arriving prior to game, storm arriving after the game," said one source.

The Nemo storm — which hit the New York metro area just five days after Super Bowl XLVII was played in New Orleans — dumped from 11 to 28 inches of snow in the area and closed NJ/NY airports and some roads for days.

Moving the game to Saturday would cause massive logistical headaches for fans who spend big bucks on hotels and air travel — never mind the ones who planned to arrive on the original game day.

“You know it will be a lot cooler, but there will be a lot of people and transportation issues regardless,” said Jeff Miller, NFL vice president of security. “When you have a lot of moving parts and large crowds, you are moving on transportation systems already overloaded with daily commuters, so you’ve got some issues to deal with.”

Suddenly, that power outage in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome doesn't seem so bad after all.

Next year's Super Bowl could be without halftime musical act: Report

Forget about wardrobe malfunctions, lip-synching and power outages — because next year's Super Bowl in the frosty climes of MetLife Stadium might go on without a halftime show altogether.

There is no plan for one at Super Bowl XLVIII in the open-air home of the Jets and Giants in New Jersey — because NFL officials can’t figure out how to stage the festivities in the frigid climate, sources told The New York Post.

“It’s because of the cold weather,” revealed one source involved in the planning of the first-ever open-to-the-winter-elements Super Bowl.

“It’s not only the acts and the singers but [also] the crews that have to put the stage together. You know, the assembly has to be done a certain way. It’s choreographed and rehearsed so it can be assembled and disassembled as fast as possible. And you just can’t assemble the stage and break it down fast enough in the cold.”

"There's no plan right now of what to do in its place," the planning official said.

The NFL is freaking out about these issues because they've never done a cold-weather Super Bowl," said another source.

While lawyers, NFL executives and TV flacks try to figure out what to do if there is a cold weather emergency leading up to Super Bowl XLVIII, a source said New Jersey and New York are stockpiling rock salt for next year — just in case.

Maybe they should be looking for some rock stars instead.

Officials with the league and the Super Bowl host committee declined comment to The Post.

Brandon Jacobs: I'll still be rooting for Niners

Brandon Jacobs was just a tiny part of the San Francisco 49ers Super Bowl run this season but — even after barely being used then discarded by the team — is still rooting for them to beat the Baltimore Ravens in Super Bowl XLVII.

"My emotions are I want the 49ers to win the game,"Jacobs said. "I don't have any regrets about not being there whatsoever.  I don't feel like I should've done things differently. I don't feel anything else.  I'm a hundred percent happy where I am."

The place where Jacobs is at the moment is his home in Atlanta.

After seven seasons — and two Super Bowl rings — with the New York Giants, the 260-pound running back found the going rough out on the west coast.

The 30-year-old Jacobs was cut by the 49ers after the season ended but not after being suspended for conduct detrimental to the team after he griped about his lack of playing time (5 carries for 7 yards) on Twitter.  He also posted photos of himself in a Giants uniform — something that irked the Niners' brass.

"I didn't mean to disrespect anybody or hurt anybody's feelings," Jacobs said.  "I didn't have any disrespect.  I didn't mean to do any of that.  I was told I would get some of the pie and I didn't.  That kind of made me a little upset and made me snap."

Jacobs isn't letting the past season discourage him from hooking up with one of the other 31 NFL teams in the future.

"I feel like I got a lot left in the tank, I feel so good right now," he said.  "I look at last year as a red-shirt year."

NFL Experience could join Super Bowl in New Jersey

New Jersey is already hosting the 2014 Super Bowl, but could also be home to the "NFL Experience," the interactive family attraction that has become a major draw during the Super Bowl festivities.

While Super Bowl XLVIII is being billed as a "New York Super Bowl," the fact remains that the game will be played in the $1.6 billion MetLife Stadium— comfortably situated in the swamps of Jersey.  Now, it looks like the  Garden State may take over most of the weeklong activities leading up to the big game.

It's sort of like the Tebow-Sanchez rivalry of states.

At a meeting of 250 business and community leaders Friday, Rich Petriccione, senior vice president of philanthropy and community relations for the Meadowlands Super Bowl Host Committee— whew, that's some title— said that the Javits Center in Manhattan originally was expected  to be home to the NFL Experience.


But Petriccione said the league later found out Javits was already booked for annual conventions in the weeks leading up to the Feb. 2,1014 Super Bowl game.

"So we're hoping to change the paradigm— maybe move the NFL Experience to New Jersey," he said at a luncheon in Hackensack.  "Or we could have the NFL Experience moving around, in Long Island in Westchester, in different boroughs [of NYC], and obviously different counties out there.  Stay tuned for that."


Petricionne said the group has looked at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City— among other places.  Maybe they can finally get some use of that empty $3.7 million headache— formerly known as the Xanadu Mall— sitting right next to MetLife Stadium now.


At this year's Super Bowl in Indianapolis, the NFL Experience took up 500,000 square feet at the Indiana Convention Center and drew over a quarter million visitors— most who weren't even going to the game.


The league-sponsored event is a way for fans near the Super Bowl site to feel like a part of the game since most of the tickets go to NFL sponsors, media and insiders.