Yahoo Finance Super Bowl fan uses Bitcoin to snap up tickets for $19,000 in first for NFL showpiece event
A New England Patriots fan is believed to have made Super Bowl history after snapping up a pair of tickets for Sunday's NFL showdown using Bitcoin.
The buyer, who wishes to remain anonymous, contacted a secondary ticket vendor on Thursday after being unable to use the cryptocurrency with official ticket outlets.
TickPick decided to take up the offer and locked in the sale when the price of the volatile currency was worth $9,360, taking the cost to almost $19,000 (£13,400).
While that might seem steep, the seats were located on the first row on the 50-yard line. TickPick was recently selling row 2 seats for $15,255 each.
"The reason why we did it was because a customer reached out and said, 'I have some bitcoin and I'd love to use it to make it happen,'" Brett Goldberg, co-CEO of TickPick, told Benzinga.
"I was very sceptical at first, but it was super easy to be honest and we saved a lot of money on fees."
Mr Goldberg pointed out that had the customer used an American Express credit card to buy the tickets, they would have had to pay a 2.89-percent fee on the transaction. Instead, the firm paid a 0.1 percent charge.
He also noted that the use of Bitcoin, which has seen its price plunge in recent days, ended up costing the customer more.
“When we started the conversation, bitcoin was valued around $11,500, but by the time we did the deal, it was down to $9,000. That’s how crazy it was over a four-day period. Originally he was going to do 2 bitcoin, but he ended up paying 2.2,” Mr Goldberg said.
While the ticket reseller was happy with accepting Bitcoin on a one-off basis, Mr Goldberg said the currency's volatility meant it wouldn't be a regular feature.
“In an hour you can see hundreds of dollars in swing,” he told UPI. “The second it hit my account it was transferred to US dollars.”
“Me as a business, I don’t want to own bitcoin. I don’t want to be exposed to the volatility.”
The ticket sale won't be the only time Bitcoin will feature in the showpiece event between the Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles.
It has been predicted that the cryptocurrency will account for an unprecedented amount of bets on the game.
"Bitcoin's meteoric rise in value over 2017 has every professional bookmaker we work with convinced that it's going to dominate the Super Bowl," said Nate Johnson, Product Manager at PayPerHead.com.
"The data's there to back that up, too. At least 50% of all Bitcoin transactions are related to the sports betting industry."
With the federal ban on full-fledged sports betting outside of Nevada now in place for 25 years, US residents who place bets online through offshore bookmakers are increasingly turning to cryptocurrency.
“With bitcoin (or cryptocurrencies in general) no one can stop you from doing whatever you want with your money. That’s why many gambling sites have opted into accepting it as payment,” Ofir Beigel, general manager of 99 Bitcoins, told Bloomberg Law.
