One of my favorite weekend getaway trips is for a Philadelphia Eagles game… they don’t call us the best traveling fan base for nothing. Regardless of what NFL team you root for, if you’re looking to travel to one of their away games, this is the guide is for you!
For those of us who aren’t into planning every detail of our travels and rather let someone else take on that burden, some cities have companies that will plan and organize the trip for you on one of their group game trips.
An extremely popular one in Philadelphia is the Green Legion. The Green Legion specializes in making fun away game packages for fans including transportation, hotel stay, exclusive bar specials, and fully-catered tailgate parties. Personally I have yet to attend a Green Legion trip, but I hear good things from those who have. I definitely want to check one out for myself in the future!
If a group trip isn’t your style or is out of your price range, I’m here to give you the lay-down on planning the weekend for yourself. The following three tips will help you plan an affordable away game get-a-way:
Transportation
The price of flights from the away city to the home city can become extremely high for dates of popular game weekends. To avoid this extra cost, consider taking a road trip! This is what my group ended up doing for the Birds game in Nashville in 2018. Not sure I’d ever go on a 13 hour car ride full of six people again, but it did save us around $800-1000 in flight costs.
If driving is not an option for your group, my next recommendation is to book your flight as early as possible. I’m talking the day your teams schedule is released that year. This will ensure you are buying at regular price or below, before airlines recognize the popularity of those dates & tickets begin to increase. If it’s too late for this, look into other airports nearby.
I suggest utilizing Google Flights, this will let you know if the price of the tickets you’re looking are above/below average. Another useful app is Hopper if you would like to track the flight price over a period of time.
Game Tickets
When it comes to purchasing your tickets to the game, multiple factors come into play that depend on your specific situation: How is your team predicted to perform this season? How is the opposing team predicted to perform? What is the stadiums typical ticket pricing?
These factors can influence the price when tickets are released, but depending on how late in the season the game is, different factors could come into play for pricing. When traveling to Nashville for the Birds game, tickets were high before the season & continued to increase as time went on, so we bought tickets early to avoid paying even more. By the time our game came around, the price of our nose bleed seats could’ve paid for the front row because of how poorly the two teams had performed that season.
So basically when it comes to buying the ticket, there is no set perfect time! There are plenty ticket sale apps out there for you to purchase from such as Stubhub a direct marketplace for ticket reselling and owned by ebay, GameTime a third-party seller known for last minute cheap prices, or my personal favorite Tickpick a third-party seller that doesn’t include service fees.
Accommodations
When it comes to accommodations for your away game getaway, it all depends on your group’s preference and dynamic. If you’re a large group looking for a place to cook meals in, play some drinking games, & ultimately spend all of your time at, then an Airbnb is definitely the route you want to take. Depending on the city/size of your group an Airbnb could range from cheap to pretty expensive, but if you’re group is planning to chill there most of the weekend, there is nothing wrong with splurging for the more luxurious Airbnb.
Now if your crew is more interested in exploring the city, heading out to bars, and just looking for a place to lay your heads at night then you may want to look into hotels or smaller/cheaper airbnbs! Airbnb has entire places, shared rooms, or even just one private room in the hosts home to book for the weekend. So again if your group doesn’t plan on hanging around the Airbnb, go for the cheap accommodations. Reading reviews can help you find a simple but clean place to crash at for the weekend.
I hope these tips will come in handy when you plan your travels to watch your home team on the road.
As you can see, time is of the essence to ensure the trip is affordable, the earlier the better when it comes to planning.
Be sure to look into what other attractions the host city has for you to explore as well ! Safe travels & GO BIRDS !
