The NFL has kicked off its 2016 season with many firsts: the first time you get to live stream games on Twitter, the first time since 1997 that both Peyton Manning and Tom Brady weren't on the field for kick-off week.
And it's the first time you can use data to snag deals in the priciest NFL season ever.
It now costs $248 on average to buy an NFL game ticket. This is the biggest year-over-year jump in prices across leagues, according TicketIQ, a pricing and deals app.
Popular home games can cost as much as $500. "Teams are managing their inventory more efficiently than they ever have" said Jesse Lawrence, founder and CEO of TicketIQ during his appearance on CNBC's "Squawk on the Street."
Put another way, teams are just not selling as many tickets. And they can do this by working with "superbrokers" known as consolidators and controlling the supply, and indeed flow, of tickets in resale markets, said Lawrence.
NFL teams have always leveraged pricing trends, purchase habits and venue sales data from back-end platforms such as TiqIQ, an older, enterprise-only version of Lawrence's company. With over six years of secondary-market data, TiqIQ offered teams and artists this market insight for a fee.
Insights including NFL 2016's "Brady premium." Fans are paying 34 percent more to watch Tom Brady, the New England Patriots' star quarterback, play versus the rest of the team. In fact, Brady's first home game back from suspension on Oct. 16 versus the Bengals is the most expensive ticket game of the 2016 season, according to TicketIQ's first annual NFL Ticket report.
And data that can save you money while you make ticket choices. For example, Broncos fans can save an average of $246 by watching the Broncos play away rather than in Denver.
But technology is now allowing a democratizing of the data and the insights, so fans can fight enterprises. Using the newly launched TicketIQ app, they can access data and pricing insights in real time.
Lawrence explains snagging the best priced tickets comes down to understanding the economics of the section you're interested in, not the pricing of the entire stadium.
For this season, the Patriots home game against the Bengals on October 16 currently has an average price of over $800. That's not only the most expensive game this season, as measured by list price, it's also the most expensive regular season Patriots game in the six years that the company has been tracking the market.
And if price is a proxy, then fans are expecting a rematch of the Seattle Seahawks vs. Patriots from two years ago, with tickets for the teams being bid up the most, while some teams are getting a boost simply because of shiny new stadiums or the new "old" stadium — as in the case of the Los Angeles Rams' stadium.