If you arrived in Tampa hoping to get a ticket in the final hours for the College Football Playoff National Championship, well, hopefully you were prepared to spend a lot of money.
The Associated Press reports that tickets for the game on Stubhub were starting at $1,899 two hours before kickoff:
Two hours before kickoff, the asking price for seats on StubHub ranged from $1,899 in the upper deck to $11,748 each for 10 tickets on the club level of Raymond James Stadium, where about 6,000 temporary seats were brought in to boost capacity to about 70,000.
I checked Stubhub about 20 minutes before kickoff, and the lowest price listed was $2,400 for a ticket (and requiring that you buy at least two tickets):
ESPN’s Darren Rovell notes that last year in Phoenix, you could get a ticket for $200 before the game (for this same Alabama-Clemson matchup):
Last year, an hour before the title game, a fan could get a ticket for $200. Hard pressed to get one for $2,000 now.
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) January 10, 2017
But, with the game being played within 600 miles of both schools this time around, the tickets were in much higher demand, as the AP explains:
With between 75,000 and 100,000 out-of-towners arriving in Tampa, Florida, for either Monday night’s matchup between Alabama and Clemson or events associated with the game, demand for tickets remained high right up to game time.
The campuses of both schools are less than 600 miles from Tampa, making it a manageable drive for fans of the teams who had to travel cross-country to Arizona for last year’s game.
