Going to the Super Bowl will cost thousands. Here’s how to do it for less.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - If you want to be at the Super Bowl, you know it’s not cheap.

Right now the price tag is punishing. Accounting for a three-night stay, the minimum adds up to $7500 for flight, hotel, rental car and game tickets. But if you’re flexible, there are ways to make it more affordable.

The biggest expense right now is game tickets, but airfare is also shockingly high, and hotels are hard to come by.

Brent Blake was in a suite Sunday night when a Harrison Butker field goal with three seconds left on the clock secured them a victory against the Cincinnati Bengals.

“It was absolutely pandemonium,” Blake described. “It was the loudest I’ve ever heard Arrowhead Stadium.”

Blake is the owner of Acendas Travel. He’s a big Chiefs fan. But even he isn’t willing to pay the current going rate.

“The biggest challenge is getting game tickets. Right now the aftermarket sale is so expensive. I just priced out upper-level tickets and they were $5,000 apiece,” he told KCTV5. “And then I started looking at airfare. American United, Delta, they all added extra flights. Unfortunately, they’re coming in at pretty expensive prices.”

By expensive, he means $1600-$2500 for a plane ticket. As for hotels, he said he’s finding rates in the range of $700-$800 per night, more for those centrally located to the stadium.

“Availability [is] one or two rooms at several remote locations, if you’re willing to drive 30 minutes, 45 minutes outside the city, you can find them,” Blake said.

Blake already reserved his rental car because he can cancel without a penalty. Going rates for that right now, he said, range from $100-$200 per day, depending on what kind of car you get.

Along with opting for a rental car, Blake said he is getting a hotel farther away from the stadium to save some money.

He’s waiting on game tickets and plane tickets, because he expects those prices to drop as we get closer to game day.

“They added flights, but airlines have different inventories, right? So, they’ve got a full coach fare and then they have the cheaper seat,” he explained. “They haven’t released the inventory for the cheaper seats. They think they can sell a majority of the plane at the higher price. Then, as they get closer to departure day, that’s what we’re going to have to do is to monitor that to see if any of those free up.”

His plan is to do what he did for Super Bowl LIV in February 2020. He went to Miami without tickets to the game to be at block parties with Chiefs fans from all over the world.

“We chatted with somebody flying from France that was a lifelong Chiefs fan,” he remembered. “That whole environment for that Friday and Saturday is just so much fun.”

That year, he hoped to snag seats at the last minute for less, and he did.

But bear in mind, the rest of the trip will be especially expensive, perhaps more expensive than Super Bowl LIV. The PGA Tour’s Waste Management Phoenix Open is taking place in Scottsdale from Feb. 8-12. Super Bowl LVII is on Feb. 12, meaning two big sports events in the Phoenix area on the same weekend.

Consider that when booking and if you plan to get around with Uber. Watch for Uber surge pricing. Check the amount of the surge before you click.

“It’s going to be constant surge,” Blake predicted. “There’s a huge golf tournament that’s going on at the same time as the Super Bowl. So Phoenix is already crowded, and Ubers are going to be surging really for the entire weekend.”

Watching prices rise and fall for everything from game tickets to airfare, waiting for the right time to pounce, is a gamble. But there’s one thing Blake is pretty sure of.

“I think the NFL is making a lot of money on us,” he said, chuckling. “There are people like me that I know of that are gonna pay the price anyway.”

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