If attending a College Football Playoff National Championship is on your bucket list, 2019 is shaping up to be the year to pull the trigger.
That’s because ticket prices for Monday’s matchup between the Alabama Crimson Tide and Clemson Tigers have fallen to the lowest level in the history of the championship since the four-team playoff structure was introduced in 2015, according to data from online ticket platform SeatGeek.
Since they went on sale, tickets have sold at an average price of $1,043, but have fallen precipitously over the past 24 hours to a clip of just $533 per ticket. With five days to go before the game, nosebleed seats posted to the resale site have now dipped below $200.
“We have not seen prices this low at this point for a CFP [championship] game before,” SeatGeek’s Chris Leyden told Yahoo Finance. “The closest was the 2016 game when prices were at $783 each five days out.” Ticket prices for that matchup, also between Alabama and Clemson, later fell another $500 to just $254 the day of the game.
Based on that trend, it’s likely resale ticket prices will continue to drop ahead of this year’s championship game that’s set to be played at Levi Stadium, where the San Francisco 49ers play their NFL home games.
Distance affects ticket prices
As fellow ticket reseller TicketIQ notes, part of the problem could be that hometown fans for both teams featured in this year’s championship would have to travel the farthest distance recorded over the last five matchups. At an average of 2,248 miles from each school, it’s a lengthy trek compared to just the 136 miles Georgia and Alabama fans traveled to get to the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta last year. Perhaps unsurprisingly, tickets to that game were the most expensive in CFP championship history (since the four-team playoff structure) at an average price of $3,046, according to SeatGeek.
In fact, since the matchup was set most of the game’s ticket sales have come from buyers who live in California, accounting for 24% of overall sales, SeatGeek said. That’s much higher than the sales percentage coming from Alabama and South Carolina at 12% each.
Overall, demand for tickets to the championship game is breaking the rising trend set during the 2018 season. After tickets to college football games posted an average price of $90 in 2016 and 2017, prices jumped to $113 per game in 2018.
All things considered, next year’s championship, which is set to be hosted at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, will likely flaunt higher prices if the matchup is once again between two southern teams in 2020.
Zack Guzman is a senior writer and on-air reporter covering entrepreneurship, startups, and breaking news at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter @zGuz.
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