Patriots one of few NFL teams seeing decreased ticket demand

Last week's announcement of the NFL's 2020 regular season schedule has injected life into the resale ticket market for most NFL teams.

According to The Athletic (subscription), though, the Patriots are not one of those teams.

While overall "NFL ticket prices are surging" even in the face of many questions due to the coronavirus, New England is one of four teams – along with the Lions, Chargers and Bears – whose secondary market for tickets is down since the schedule was released.

"As it turns out, not only did buyers emerge for NFL tickets, their buying exceeded the volume over a similar period of last year on the secondary markets, driving prices up, according to a variety of ticket resellers, including SeatGeek and TicketIQ," The Athletic wrote. "Average prices on the secondary market for NFL games since the schedule release Thursday night are $391, which is up 51 percent from 2019, with only four teams down; the New England Patriots, Detroit Lions, Los Angeles Chargers and Chicago Bears, according to TicketIQ. The 51 percent rise is by far the largest year over year increase TicketIQ has tracked."

Obviously Tom Brady's departure from New England and arrival in Tampa Bay has very much affected the ticked prices for both teams.

"Brady not only helped drive demand for the Bucs — up 135 percent on the secondary ticket market — the six-time Super Bowl winner's free agency decision clearly caused a fall in demand for tickets for his former team, the Patriots. Those are selling at 39 percent less than they did last year, according to TicketIQ," although that drop isn't as significant as some analysts expected.