Here’s how much some Eagles fans are spending to be in Phoenix for the Super Bowl

Eagles fan Victor Ramirez will spend about $9,000 to attend the Super Bowl with his wife, Margarita.

And they aren’t even paying for a place to stay. They’re planning to crash with Ramirez’s sister in Scottsdale.

Still, the couple dropped $3,200 apiece on upper-level tickets, secured from the colleague of a friend, and $500 on round-trip airfare from Chicago, which is near their home in Portage, Ind.

“I was debating because it was a big price. But you only live once,” said Ramirez, 38, a railroad operator who said he’s grateful to have enough money saved to afford the trip without sacrificing much elsewhere. “You never know when they’re going to make it again.”

Many rabid Birds fans have been weighing the financial pros and cons in the days since the Eagles clinched the NFC title and secured their second trip in five years to the Super Bowl, where they will play the Kansas City Chiefs in Sunday’s game (6:30 p.m. Philadelphia time).

Prices for big events such as the Super Bowl fluctuate rapidly. But as of Wednesday, the cheapest Super Bowl tickets on the secondary market were about $3,800 each for upper-level seats. Weekend flights from Philadelphia to Phoenix started at $729 round-trip, according to Expedia, and the cheapest hotels in the area were $400 to $500 a night.

“It’s a natural market response: If you have a lot more demand for something, you want to sell it at a price that people are willing to pay,” said Brett Christenson, assistant clinical professor of marketing and director of the Sports Business Program at Penn State’s Smeal College of Business. “An airline or a hotel or the NFL, they’re incentivized to do it [increase prices] because their competitors are going to do it, and it’s what the market is demanding.”

The people dropping thousands on the weekend likely fall into two categories, Christenson said.

“It is mostly going to be people who are in that higher socioeconomic bracket and have more discretionary income” due to the allure of a team, the sport, or the entertainment surrounding the game, he said.

The other group: “Fans that have a high level of passion, feelings and emotions and this connection to the team and the brand,” Christenson said. “There are people who are going to spend money and have to readjust their budget to get to this game.”

Jill Mullin has been planning a potential Super Bowl trip since the end of the regular season. She is an avid Birds fan who can be found in South Philly many fall Sundays — attending Eagles games, tailgating, or both.

“I originally put a ton of money aside, thinking I was going to need it for this,” said Mullin, who originally budgeted $15,000 for the weekend.

But the 49-year-old software sales executive said she will likely end up spending less than a third of that budget.

That is in part, she said, because she and a friend “lucked out” on a good deal on tickets through social connections. She declined to elaborate on how much she spent to get into Sunday’s game.

But Mullin saved elsewhere, too, by planning ahead. Before the NFC championship game, she and her friend booked fully refundable round-trip airfare into Las Vegas for less than $400 each. They’ll rent a car for the five-hour drive to Phoenix, where they are staying for free at the home of a friend who recently relocated there.

“It was pretty shocking I was able to have this all happen,” she said. “I’m super excited.”

Carolyn Sfirakis, 40, a meeting planner, and her husband, Mike, 46, a mortgage broker, are heading from their Plymouth Meeting home to Phoenix to witness a rare Eagles Super Bowl appearance in person.

Yet the couple have “no grand illusions of actually getting to the game,” she said Tuesday. “The current ticket prices being $4,500, that’s way far from anything we’re comfortable spending.”

Before the NFC championship game, Sfirakis, a frequent business traveler, said she booked their airfare entirely on airline miles, minus $29 per person flight insurance, in case the Eagles lost. At the end of the third quarter, she pulled the trigger on a hotel that was still accepting rewards program points.

“We were going, or I was going to be out 300,000 Hilton points,” she said with a laugh.

“Eagles fans know how rare these opportunities are.”

Ahead of the weekend, the couple agreed that they’d be OK “bouncing back” from buying tickets that were $1,000 or less each, she said. But it was uncertain whether prices would drop to that level as game day approached.

For now, she said, their plan is to tailgate with a group of fellow Philly fans and occasionally check in on ticket prices.

“If we fall ... into someone trying to get rid of a ticket desperately at the last minute, great,” she said.

And if they don’t, she added, they’ll watch at a nearby bar. The trip will still be worthwhile.

Sfirakis’ father, Jim Muldoon, died suddenly in 2009 at the age of 52. He was a diehard Eagles fan who frequently talked about retiring in Arizona.

When the Eagles won the Super Bowl in 2018, she and her family were especially emotional, wishing Jim could be there to witness the joyful and long-awaited occasion.

On Sunday, whether Sfirakis watches the game from inside or outside the stadium in Arizona, her father will be on her mind, too.

“Eagles fans know how rare these opportunities are. I don’t want to go another 40 years. … It was Dad’s favorite place on earth,” she said.