Two ticketless but 'super confident' fans sneaked their way into $25,000 seats at the Super Bowl
"Fake it 'til you make it" shouldn't work for the hottest sports ticket of the entire year — but for two intrepid stadium crashers, that was exactly what propelled them into the inner sanctum of Super Bowl Sunday.
Richard Whelan and Paul McEvoy, who flew to Arizona from their native Ireland in the hopes of snagging tickets to the Patriots-Seahawks throwdown, came up empty handed on their initial quest. But instead of throwing in the towel, the men decided to sneak into the festivities. "Our game plan was to be super confident" while trying to sneak through a crowded ticket gate, Whelan divulged to the Irish Independent. The pair saw their opportunity in a crowd of first-aid workers being ushered into University of Phoenix Stadium: "Between one layer of security and another we just walked in behind these 20 first aid workers, straight up to the front door and hid in behind them," Whelan reported. After a bit of seat hopping, the pair were tipped off that two people in the fourth row — where seats go for $25,000 a pop — were performing in the halftime show and wouldn't be returning to their seats. The rest is social media history:
But even blaggers get the blues: Whelan and McEvoy were Seahawks fans.
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Mike Barry is the senior editor of audience development and outreach at TheWeek.com. He was previously a contributing editor at The Huffington Post. Prior to that, he was best known for interrupting a college chemistry class.
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