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- Georgia secured their spot in the national championship with their Rose Bowl win on Monday night, causing ticket prices to skyrocket to almost $3,000 each on some secondary markets.
- The prices are likely being driven by Georgia fans, hoping to cheer on their team to their first national title since 1980 in Atlanta next week.
- According to StubHub, 50% of tickets have been purchased by football fans in Georgia, compared to just 3.1% of sales going to Alabama.
Georgia defeated Oklahoma in a double-overtime thriller at the Rose Bowl on Monday night to punch their ticket to the national title game. But fans of the Bulldogs looking for tickets of their own to attend the game will be paying a premium to get into the arena on January 8.
With the game being held in the new Mercedes-Benz Superdome in Atlanta, Georgia will be playing for the championship in what is essentially a home game. With the Bulldogs chasing down their first title since 1980, ticket prices for the game are skyrocketing.
As ESPN’s Darren Rovell noted, StubHub actually went offline for over a half hour on Monday night, and when the site was back up the cheapest ticket customers could find went for a whopping $2,480. Compare that to last year, when Rovell was writing in similar disbelief about tickets selling for an average price of $978 for those looking to get into Clemson and Alabama’s championship rematch.
According to StubHub, the average price of a ticket to the national championship was $2,689 on Tuesday. Demand for this year’s game was up 106% over last year, with 50% of the buyers being based in Georgia, and just 3.1% of buyers from Alabama.
At Vivid Seats, another secondary market for ticket-sellers, the price of tickets to the game spiked 37% after Georgia beat Oklahoma to secure their spot.
The surge in pricing may seem obscene on the surface, but it’s also not that hard to believe, as Georgia makes for something of a perfect storm when it comes to ticket sellers. First, since the game is being held in Atlanta, Bulldogs fans don’t have to worry about getting to the stadium as they would have had to if the game was elsewhere — it’s not exactly a home game, but it’s just a 72 mile drive from their Athens stadium. Bulldogs fans can put money that they would have put towards flights and hotels into their tickets instead.
Further, Georgia is a storied program, but they haven’t won a title since 1980, meaning fans aren’t dealing with the any sort of fatigue that Bama or Clemson fans might have had when trying to rally for another expensive trip.
Georgia fans have been waiting for this opportunity, and it looks like they’re willing to pay top dollar to make sure they don’t miss it.
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