Giants Fans Make a Rush For Super Bowl Tickets

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The New York Sun

New Yorkers are scrambling to secure tickets, flights, and lodging for the Super Bowl in Arizona after the Giants secured their place in the big game with an overtime victory Sunday night against the Green Bay Packers. But with flights filling up fast, hotels running out of rooms, and ticket prices soaring to five-figures, diehard fans are being forced to get creative with their game-day strategies.

Brooklyn-born Joseph DeVincenzo, a former taxi driver and lifelong Giants fan, is prepared to go the distance for his beloved football team — literally. Mr. DeVincenzo, 55, will make the 2,500-mile drive to Glendale, Ariz., alone in his Ford Crown Victoria, and is prepared to stay awake the entire 44 hours for a chance to see the Giants take on the New England Patriots on February 3.

“No way I’m going to miss this,” Mr. DeVincenzo said in a telephone interview. “Especially a chance to kick New England’s butt. We owe them one.”

Phone lines for chartered jet companies yesterday were ringing “off the hook,” one broker, Neal Impellizeri, said.

“Let’s put it this way,” Mr. Impellizeri, the owner of New York-based Concord Private Jets, said. “By the end of the day after tomorrow, there will be no jets available out of anywhere from here to Maine.”

Concord already has secured for fans chartered jets priced as high as $74,000 for the round-trip journey.

“There will be stewardesses in uniforms and the whole nine yards,” Mr. Impellizeri said.

CharterLastMinute.com, a San Diego-based company with private flights out of Teterboro, N.J., is stocking its planes with chips, guacamole, and “lots and lots of beer,” president Tara Hollier said. The company yesterday received 14 requests for private flights to the Super Bowl.

Arizona hotels also are seeing a spike in reservations from New Yorkers.

“You guys are crazy,” the president of the hotel reservation site SuperBowlHotelSuites.com, Richard Fleming, said. Since Sunday night’s win, Mr. Fleming said he has received about four times as many reservation requests from New Yorkers as from New Englanders.

“I think the Patriots are so spoiled,” Mr. Fleming said. “Their fans aren’t traveling as much as the Giants fans.” By next Thursday, he predicted, all transportation and lodging will be sold out. A New York ticket broker Michael Walsh, who now has 40 tickets on hand, said he sees little incentive to send his corporate clients to Arizona. “There are Motel 6s, but the Motel 6s are going for $300 a night,” he said.

Instead, Mr. Walsh is booking trips to Las Vegas, where clients can take advantage of the city’s four-night hotel deals. From there, it’s a one-hour flight to Phoenix, near Glendale.

Mr. Walsh, who owns and operates TicketdeskNY, has set up “one-stop shop” packages that include travel, hotel, and pre- and post-game parties. As a package, his product avoids New York State’s anti-scalping laws, which regulate the sale of tickets on the secondary market.

Tickets alone, Mr. Walsh said, will cost at least $4,000 for the worst views. His most expensive seats are on the 50-yard line in the 20th row, for $13,610.

Mr. DeVincenzo, who said he hopes to score a scalped ticket for about $2,000 when he arrives in Arizona next week, offered a bigger incentive to make the trek out West. “What would you rather be in?” he asked. “Twenty-five degree weather or 70 degree weather? That’s the question.”


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