Fans trying to grind out a Super Bowl ticket win

The worst seat in the house for Super Bowl XXXVIII at Houston's Reliant Stadium, upper row behind the end zone, was for sale yesterday for $1,795 on TicketCity.com. Diehard Patriots fan Michael McGuire just wasn't buying it -- at least, not yet.

McGuire and many other Pats fans, still giddy over Sunday's victory over the Indianapolis Colts, have begun a quest that seems as daunting as extending a 14-game winning streak -- finding tickets to the Feb. 1 showdown with the Carolina Panthers at a price they can afford.

The Patriots used a computerized lottery to sell a limited number of tickets to the 61,000 season ticket holders at face value, roughly $500 to $600. The team posted the winners on its website yesterday and will send out official notification letters in the coming days. Patriots spokesman Stacey James said approximately 2,500 of the team's 61,000 season ticket holders won the lottery, receiving the opportunity to buy up to two tickets apiece. The 5,000 tickets awarded through the lottery represent about half of the team's total Super Bowl ticket allotment, James said.

But for fans less fortunate, the question was whether to pay exorbitant prices to ticket brokers who are charging as much as $5,500; wait a few days for prices to dip; or make the journey to Houston and take their chances. McGuire and many others are opting for the latter strategy.

"I own a real estate company, so I understand market value. Everything is dictated by supply and demand," said McGuire, 31, who lives in Jamaica Plain. "My strategy right now is to get my own air fare and a hotel in Houston -- because it's Carolina, there won't be a huge demand down there. Then I'll wait until kickoff and be there with cash in hand." McGuire said he was hoping that not as many Carolina Panthers fans will trek to Houston for the game as would if the opponent were New York, Los Angeles, or Philadelphia.

Harvard sophomore Rob Grenzeback, who grew up in Winchester, says the current ticket prices are way beyond his means -- as is airfare. So Grenzeback is planning to drive, picking up friends at Oberlin College in Ohio and Davidson College in North Carolina on a 70-hour odyssey concluding, he hopes, with a seat at Reliant Stadium. If not, he says, it will still be worth the trip.

"Down there, tickets might still be too expensive," he said. "I think the point is just to hang out and be near the action."

Attending the World Series or the NCAA Final Four is tough, but securing a Super Bowl ticket is the Mother of All Ticket Challenges, sports fans say. The NFL gives out a limited number of tickets to each franchise, but most of them are doled out to corporate sponsors and local bigwigs, leaving ordinary fans in the cold.

The Patriots lottery was weighted toward season ticket holders who have had their seats for a long time or hold large blocks of them, according to the Patriots. Season ticket holders said preference is also given to those who hold the expensive club seats.

"It's said that the Super Bowl has become such a corporate event and that real fans get the short end of the stick," Mary Ouellette of Gardner wrote in an e-mailed response to a Globe request for fans' stories. "I'm a season-ticket holder and made my plans to go to Houston long ago, but I don't have a ticket to the game and may not be able to afford one once I get there."

Even self-styled ticket-purchasing experts were flummoxed by the challenge of securing Super Bowl tickets. Steven Solari of Easton said he was able to get tickets to the Colts game, the Red Sox-Yankees American League Championship Series, and the World Series by calling ticket offices in other, less busy states and by opening multiple browser windows on team websites. But Solari said the Super Bowl is "a whole different animal," and his old tricks have failed him thus far.

"I've gone through all the typical channels, and now I'm trying to figure out alternative ways. I'm registering for every contest I can possibly find -- the `Hail Mary' approach -- and going through all the ticket broker sites throughout the country," said Solari, 33, the director of marketing for a software company.

To be sure, there were plenty of people willing and able to pay for expensive Super Bowl travel packages.

Joel Abramson, president of Flagship Travel in Marblehead, said his agents had taken dozens of calls by noon yesterday from fans looking for Super Bowl travel packages. Packages including charter air service to Houston, hotel accommodations, meals, ground transportation, and game tickets were selling for about $4,000, according to Abramson.

"We had a guy just call and book 10 packages for $55,000, $5,500 each. Amazing," Abramson said.

But Abramson urged buyers to be careful: While dozens of companies are offering Super Bowl travel packages, some won't be able to deliver what they advertise.

Abramson said he is able to purchase the tickets for his packages through a handful of ticket brokers with whom he has built a relationship over the years. The exact method by which those brokers have secured those tickets is unclear, because they are unwilling to discuss their contacts.

But the principal recipients of the tickets from the league are the NFL teams, the players, and the corporate sponsors.

Sports tour companies book blocks of hotel rooms and charter flights to the Super Bowl host city months or even years in advance, making it possible for them to advertise their packages as soon as the NFL conference championships are decided. But often the packages are put on the street before the tour operator can corral enough game tickets.

"It happens every year. Some people go down to the Super Bowl and find out they don't have tickets and some guy makes off with their money," Abramson said.

Carey Dean, president of Esoteric Sports Tours, an Atlanta company that is selling Super Bowl packages, said it takes years of building relationships with Super Bowl sponsors, NFL officials, and even some players to find and buy the volume of tickets needed for a sports package business.

"You can't just go buy Super Bowl tickets from the ticket office. They don't sell them that way," he said. "We buy tickets from sponsors, fans, players."

High-end tour operators aren't the only ones doing a brisk business because of the Patriots' success. Retailers that stock Patriots paraphernalia are celebrating a postholiday season windfall as fans line up to buy Super Bowl caps and T-shirts, including copies of those worn by team members following Sunday's victory.

"One customer bought 72 locker room T-shirts for a company, and I also had another person come in and buy 12 of the game shirts," said Fred Jones, store manager at the Sports Authority in Framingham.

"Patriots fever has definitely gripped the Hub."