Super Bowl 2015: Tickets Priciest in History

— -- Super Bowl XLIX will go down as the most expensive ticket in the game's 49-year history.

The two biggest ticket resale sites, StubHub and NFL Ticket Exchange, said the average price of a sold ticket for this year's game was $4,600 and $4,131, respectively.

If those numbers even seem low, it's because most of the tickets sold before Wednesday when the price skyrocketed. By Thursday, it was nearly impossible to find a ticket for under $4,500. Come Saturday, scoring a ticket for less than $7,000 would be a feat.

Prices rose so quickly because brokers sold Super Bowl tickets, as they have in recent years, without having them in hand. In past years, they would rely on the price dropping as it got closer to the game in order to make their margin on the sale. Except this year that didn't happen. So by Thursday, ticket resellers had a choice of either buying a ticket at a loss and giving it to their customer or offering a refund and admit that they never had the tickets.

StubHub spent an undisclosed amount of money to make sure that every customer that bought tickets on the site got into the game, offering a payment plan to the seller to be able to pay them back over time for backing out. Every fan who bought tickets on NFL Ticket Exchange also had a ticket to the game.

Others weren't as lucky. Those who bought tickets through Vivid Seats were given a 200 percent refund per ticket which, for most, wasn't enough to be able to buy a ticket into the stadium because prices never dropped.

Other sites, which offered refunds and an additional percentage on top of it, were making fans who took the deals sign agreements that they would waive the right to sue in the future.

For its part, NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said the league didn't do anything different than what it had done in the past as far as distribution goes.

The league office retains 25.2 percent of the tickets, each participating team gets 17.5 percent, the host Cardinals get 5 percent and the remaining 29 NFL teams get 1.2 percent each.

The face value of the tickets this year ranged from $800 to $1,900.