A post I wrote for the ParkWhiz blog:

If you traveled to the recent Super Bowl in Texas, or you just have a strange obsession with all things Super Bowl, you may have heard about the $900 parking spot. But was Super Bowl parking really that expensive?

As a primary parking providers for Super Bowl XLV, ParkWhiz had a bunch of data lying around, so I decided to do some digging. The answer is, no, of course you don’t have to pay $900 to park at the Super Bowl. But you can, and some people did.

How many?

Not many. The median price for a parking spot at the Super Bowl was $104. While the area directly surrounding the stadium had relatively few places to park, there are several office parks within a mile. There was cheap parking to be had, as long as you didn’t mind a little walking.

In fact, the price dropped exponentially as parking spots got further from the stadium. Land available for parking increases exponentially as you get further from the stadium, and this chart shows that the increased competition had a strong effect on price. Supply and demand still applies, even at the Super Bowl.

Over half of the attendees waited until the week before the game to line up a parking spot.

The chart spikes on 1/25, when the teams playing in the Super Bowl were decided. There’s a dip over the weekend, and then things pick back up, with the most spots being reserved on the day of the game.

Most people reserved a spot from their computer, but the weekend of the game we saw a spike in reservations from mobile devices.

This most likely reflects fans who traveled to game and left their laptops at home.

Could these people have saved money by securing their spot earlier? This chart would suggest not:

But this chart is misleading. It shows the average price of the spots being reserved. Remember that sales volume was relatively low up until 1/26. The high average price early on was caused by people who knew they were going to the game regardless of which teams were playing. That indicates that these attendees are a little less price-sensitive than most.

In fact, the fans that waited until the last week to buy parking spots paid the highest prices. There were some last minute discounts on the mid-range parking spots, but the average fan would have saved by acting sooner rather than later.

So back to our original question. The average price paid for a parking spot for Super Bowl XLV was $124, quite a bit more than the average $36 you’d pay for a spot at a Cowboys home game. However, Super Bowl tickets were selling for an average of $3676 according to StubHub, a whopping 2298% markup over the $183 (according to SeatGeek) you’d pay for a ticket to a regular season game.

It almost makes the parking sound like a bargain.

PS, check back on February 21 to see if Daytona 500 parking experiences similar fluctuations.