The Las Vegas Raiders went 6-11 last season. They swapped out longtime starting quarterback Derek Carr with Jimmy Garoppolo, a player the 49ers benched in 2022 in favor of a guy who eventually slipped to third place on their depth chart (Trey Lance, subsequently traded to the Cowboys for a fourth round pick). Garoppolo is still working through a foot injury and he’ll be playing against the backdrop of a defense that ranked 28th out of 32 teams when it came to yards allowed last fall.
And despite all this, no team is hotter on StubHub’s secondary ticket market than the Raiders.
Data released Friday from the online marketplace further validated the NFL and team owner Mark Davis’s decision to move a team to Sin City. Despite a thoroughly underwhelming 2022, Las Vegas is selling tickets at a tremendous rate.
A Week 3 tilt against the Pittsburgh Steelers, which doubles as Vegas’s home opener, is currently the most in demand seat on StubHub. The Green Bay Packers’ Monday night visit in Week 5 ranks fourth when it comes to the most popular — and revenue-generating — games on the site.
The Raiders drew a perfect storm of opponents outside the AFC West this fall. They’ll bring in two of the game’s most popular old school teams when Pittsburgh and Green Bay come to town. They’ll also pull from major markets thanks to road trips from the New York Giants, New York Jets and New England Patriots (whose last trip to Vegas ended in the most hilarious way possible). Factor in division rivalry games against prospective playoff teams like the Los Angeles Chargers and Kansas City Chiefs and it’s a very good year to be a Las Vegas season ticket holder.
StubHub’s report compiled a list of data points suggesting new trends for 2023. Some we expected; others are a bit more surprising. Let’s look at the non-Raiders developments from a shallow dive into this season’s ticket resale information.
1
The Dallas Cowboys still lay claim to America's Team
The only team to do less in cumulative sales through StubHub is the Cowboys, who are also responsible for three of the highest-selling games of the year (at San Francisco, vs. the New York Jets and at Carolina, somehow). Per the site’s official figures, they’ve sold more tickets — and for more money — than any other team in the NFL since 2018. Of course, that could just mean their fans use StubHub more frequently than any other resale site, but in the scope of this data it continues a trend that suggests fans in Texas are not only willing to spend money in the JerryDome, but also across the country.
2
The NFL International Series' expansion into Germany is going as well as anyone could have hoped
The second-most in demand game of 2023, at least per resale data from StubHub, is a Miami Dolphins-Kansas City Chiefs showdown not in Arrowhead Stadium but across the Atlantic Ocean in Frankfurt, Germany. The NFL’s debut in the country’s fifth-largest city — home to roughly 750,000 — is the second highest-selling game of the season behind Steelers-Raiders.
That makes sense. Not only is it an expansion into a successful region that buoyed NFL Europe well past its natural expiration date, but it also features two teams with short odds to take down the AFC title. The Dolphins, in particular, are thriving. Their games have earned more than three times as much in total resale value as they had at this point in 2022.
3
Aaron Rodgers has Jets fans buying in
With Rodgers in the fold, the Jets have produced a 451 percent increase in overall StubHub sales than they had at this point last season. That’s best in the league ahead of the defending world champions. The Kansas City Chiefs, in second place, have seen a 316 percent increase in resale market sales compared to 2022. The New England Patriots, with a Vegas preseason win total of 6.5, rank fourth when it comes to rising sales (248 percent).
4
The Washington Commanders are the team people are most willing to pay big to watch on the road
No team in the NFL caused a bigger average spike between a venue’s average ticket price and the cost for their specific road game than the Commanders. Buyers were willing to pay a premium to watch Sam Howell and, more notably, a team emerging from the cocoon of garbage and lawsuits inside which former team owner Dan Snyder had kept it insulated. Equally important: watching Washington on the road means not having to travel to the Landover debris pile known as FedEx Field.
They were the only NFC franchise in the top five, edging out the Bills, Jets, Steelers and Bengals.
