College Football Playoff on Campuses Sends Ticket, Travel Prices Soaring

The new College Football Playoff is set, and with it, what would have previously been an oddity: meaningful postseason games on college campuses.

In the inaugural format, the top four teams will get a bye week and advance straight to the Rose, Sugar, Fiesta, and Peach bowls. The remaining eight teams battle it out in the first round on Dec. 20 and Dec. 21 at the home stadium of the higher seed.

Here are the matchups:

• No. 7 Notre Dame hosts No. 10 Indiana, Friday, Dec. 20, 8 p.m. ET on ABC/ESPN
• No. 6 Penn State hosts No. 11 SMU, Saturday, Dec. 21, 12 p.m. ET on TNT/Max
• No. 5 Texas hosts No. 12 Clemson, Saturday, Dec. 21, 4 p.m. ET on TNT/Max
• No. 8 Ohio State hosts No. 9 Tennessee, Saturday, Dec. 21, 8 p.m. ET on ABC/ESPN

The CFP did plan for some of the uncertainty: In the fall of 2022, the CFP contacted hotels in all 134 FBS college towns with a request for proposal and signed about 90 deals, according to The Athletic. The majority of those were canceled in November.

The CFP also tried to control ticket prices, placing general seating (not clubs or suites) between $100 and $250, The Athletic reported. The CFP keeps all ticket revenue and dishes it out to conferences, but each home team can choose how to sell tickets. Notre Dame–Indiana has already sold out of tickets listed on the team website. (Texas isn’t doing a general public sale, and Ohio State’s opens Thursday.) Resale markets have, unsurprisingly, run away with the costs.

On StubHub on Tuesday, the get-in price including estimated fees for each game sat at:

• $911 for Notre Dame–Indiana
• $142 for Penn State–SMU
• $314 for Texas-Clemson
• $336 for Ohio State–Tennessee

The four host schools are college football juggernauts, and they are likely more equipped to handle an extra football game on short notice than some of their opponents. But travel costs have still exploded as the host towns look to capitalize on the novelty of the first CFP.

As of Tuesday, State College hotels that usually cost about $100 per night jumped to roughly $1,200 to $1,500 per night during the CFP, or sold out of rooms completely. Airbnbs in the town have jumped from a couple of hundred dollars per night to roughly between $1,000 and $2,500.

State College is a small market, far from major airports, and boasts the largest stadium of the four schools. On top of that, it’s also fall graduation weekend for the university, meaning hotels already had increased demand.

“Between the Playoff and graduation, we knew that the inventory was going to go rather quickly, and we noticed that trend a few months ago as things started getting booked up based off of the rumor mill,” Kelsey Butler-Reed, a member of the sales team at the Courtyard by Marriott in State College, tells Front Office Sports. “Now that it’s official, it’s completely sold out as soon as the announcement was made.”

Many of South Bend’s hotels sold out of their inventory, and several Airbnbs are higher than $3,500 per night. South Bend, Ind., and State College, Pa., are the two smallest cities—at roughly 100,000 residents—hosting games and therefore more vulnerable to price-gouging. Columbus has nearly a million residents, but still, a number of hotels near OSU have shot up to more than $400 for Saturday night. Travel prices in Austin—one of the largest markets in the country—appear to be largely unchanged.

South Bend, State College, Austin, and Columbus are the first and only college towns chosen to host one of these non-bowl postseason games in the modern era, and the unanticipated matchup is a gift for some.

“It’s given a little bit of extra boost in winter months,” Mike Patel, who owns a Holiday Inn Express about 25 miles from Penn State, tells FOS. “We really slow down in winter months. So this gives extra help to pay the bills and take care of other stuff for the property.”