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For NFL fans descending upon New Orleans for Super Bowl LIX, finding a place to stay this week is a tall—and expensive—task, which is good news for short-term property owners.
As of Jan. 30, revenue from short-term rentals like Airbnb or VRBO for the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights surrounding the Feb. 9 game had reached $10.5 million, according to data from rental analytics company AirDNA (unaffiliated with Airbnb). Nearly 16,000 nights had been sold across those three days alone.
The average nightly rate for short-term rentals this weekend is between $670 and $690, according to AirDNA, which is still much higher than a typical weekend in New Orleans, usually under $400 per night.
The only comparison for an event of this magnitude in New Orleans: Mardi Gras in 2024, which also fell on the second weekend of February (culminating in Fat Tuesday on Feb. 13), when 16,715 short-term rental nights sold between Feb. 9 and Feb. 11, resulted in $6.7 million in revenue.
But the demand around Super Bowl LIX is expected to keep growing: As of Jan. 30, occupancy for short-term rentals has reached 91%. (Mardi Gras is later this year, with Fat Tuesday landing on March 4, so those rental numbers aren’t yet available.)
As tens of thousands of Chiefs and Eagles fans and sports media workers arrive in New Orleans this week, hotel prices have skyrocketed, too. This coming weekend, two-star hotels in the region have been nearing $1,000 per night, while four- and five-star ones are frequently exceeding $4,000 per night.
This is the second time in three seasons that the Chiefs and Eagles are meeting in the Super Bowl. Their first meeting made a lot of money for short-term rental owners, too.
In February 2023, Airbnb alone reported hosts in the greater Phoenix metro area collectively earned over $27 million from more than 45,000 rentals during the week of Super Bowl LVII, which was played at State Farm Stadium, the home of the Cardinals. It should be noted that week coincided with the WM Phoenix Open—the annual PGA Tour event that draws well over 700,000 fans to TPC Scottsdale.
New Orleans has fewer hotel rooms and short-term rentals than Phoenix and last year’s Super Bowl host city Las Vegas, which sold roughly 10,000 short-term rental bookings per night, which AirDNA says is close to double New Orleans’s capacity.
While the numbers for staying in New Orleans this week are astounding, it’s clearly not stopping NFL fans from enjoying the Big Easy as the season concludes—in many cases, no matter the cost.
