If you’re looking for tickets to the Super Bowl in Arlington, Texas on Feb. 6th, you might need to take out a bank loan or put a second mortgage on the house. Official tickets have been sold out for weeks of course, but as usual, dozens of websites are selling them at greatly-inflated prices. The lowest prices for one ticket average about U.S. $1,800 on these parasitic sites and the prices just keep climbing steadily after that up to about $10,000 a piece.

But the official prices are also quite high for the NFL championship showdown between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Green Bay Packers as the average price is $900, with tickets ranging between $600 and $1,200. This represents a 12.5 per cent increase over last year’s game. In fact, the prices have increased way above the rate of inflation over the years. According to the U.S. Consumer Price Index the ticket prices have risen 8,900 per cent since 1967 while total inflation rates have been under 600 per cent.

Green Bay won the very first Super Bowl back in 1967 and the average face-value price for a ticket to the game was just $10. Many people feel the Super Bowl has actually become more of a ritual for American football fans than a championship game. Like the English FA Cup in soccer, fans don’t know who will be playing in the Final, but it’s an event all unto itself as it celebrates the sport rather than the individual teams.

The ticket prices never go down, even when economic times are bad and they have a habit of soaring when the economy’s good. But the black market tickets feel the pressure when times are bad as last year the prices were over 50 per cent lower on average.

And of course, the tickets to the game aren’t the only high-priced things of the weekend as local hotels also see it as a chance to jack up the prices. Hotels in the Dallas-Fort Worth region are charging double their normal rates and car rentals cost three times their normal price. Even the airlines are getting in the act when it comes to gouging fans as fares are raised by about 50 per cent or more. And you might want to think twice about driving to Cowboys Stadium, which are holding this year’s Super Bowl, as the best parking spots are going for about $1,000.