Tickets for Monday night’s College Football Playoff National Championship in Atlanta were always going to be expensive. But when local favorite Georgia won its semifinal matchup to qualify to qualify for the title game, you had to know prices were going to soar.
And soar they have. As of about 6:30 p.m. ET on Monday, 90 minutes before kickoff, the cheapest available tickets on SeatGeek were selling for $1,643. The most expensive seats carried a price tag of $9,944. According to ESPN, the average sold ticket on StubHub is 41 percent higher than the highest average sold ticket of the previous six national championship games.
Though it may seem absurd for anyone to pay more than $1,600 to attend a football game (let alone nearly $10,000), this could be the most important game in Georgia football history, and it’s happening right in many Bulldogs fans’ area code. Diehard fans have a chance to see their team pursue its first national championship since 1980 without leaving the state. If you’ve got a couple grand lying around, maybe that’s worth it? Possibly? Arguably?
Let’s just say if title-game tickets are a waste of money, don’t tell that to this fan, who began sobbing when his son surprised him with seats to the game this week.
This morning I had the privilege of surprising my father with tickets to see our Georgia Bulldogs play in the 2018 #CFPlayoff National Championship Game. #GoDawgs pic.twitter.com/rx1nuVk9II
— Chañce (@ChanceDawg19) January 7, 2018
Given that the game is in Atlanta and that Alabama fans have had numerous opportunities to cheer their team in title contests in recent years, expect a hefty homefield advantage for the Bulldogs. We’ll see whether that’s enough for Georgia to topple the (slightly favored) Crimson Tide.