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The Miami-Indiana showdown in the College Football Playoff national championship game is trending toward being the most expensive title matchup on record.
Since both teams secured their spots with victories in the CFP semifinals last week, the resale ticket market has been climbing at unprecedented levels.
As of Sunday afternoon, the only tickets remaining on Ticketmaster, the game’s official ticketing provider, were resale tickets, and the cheapest was $3,565. The cheapest get-in ticket on resale marketplace TickPick was $3,370. That’s nearly double the get-in price for Ohio State–Notre Dame last year—$1,830 on TickPick—which was the previous record for the most expensive CFP national championship game.
The majority of game tickets are allocated to the two participating schools and are originally sold directly through each institution.
A Perfect Storm
Several factors are contributing to the high demand on the secondary market for next week’s CFP finale.
Indiana is playing in its first national championship game in program history. The school has the largest living alumni base, with over 805,000 former Hoosiers around the world. While that’s roughly quadruple Miami’s living alumni base of around 200,000, the Hurricanes have a much more storied history, with five AP national championships (1983, 1987, 1989, 1991, and 2001).
The 65,000-seat Hard Rock Stadium is the home venue for the Hurricanes (and the NFL’s Dolphins). Miami does not have an on-campus stadium. During the regular season, the Hurricanes averaged 63,834 fans per game. This will be the first time a college football national championship game will take place in a participating team’s home stadium, even though the Hurricanes will officially be designated the visiting team.
Both Indiana and Miami fan bases have traveled well—and many miles—during the CFP tournament. Miami had to visit a hostile Texas A&M environment in the first round before victories at the Cotton Bowl in Texas over Ohio State and the Fiesta Bowl in Arizona over Ole Miss. Indiana had a first-round bye before dominating performances in the Rose Bowl in California over Alabama and the Peach Bowl in Georgia over Oregon.
