The Cost of Final Four Tickets
I was just looking at prices for Final Four tickets on eBay and I was shocked to see how cheap they were. Especially after last year. But I dug a little bit deeper, I think there’s a number of things at play here:
- Distance: Last year, the total distance from all four schools to St. Louis was 1738 miles. This year, UCLA alone is more than 2000 miles from Indianapolis. Last year the schools were, on average, 431.5 miles from Saint Louis. This year, even if we remove UCLA from the equation, the schools are a total of 2199 miles from Indianapolis, or an average of 717.3 miles apiece. If we add UCLA back into that equation, the schools are 4411 miles from Indianapolis, or 1103 miles apiece.
- Participating schools. Last year featured North Carolina, and Michigan St, who are notoriously big-time basketball schools. It also featured Illinois, which has the largest alumni association and has never won an NCAA basketball title, thus leading to a very hungry fanbase. If you think I’m drinking the Orange Kool-aid in stating that argument, I’ll also add that the Illini drew 35,000 fans for their Final 4 PRACTICE SESSION on the Friday beforehand. This year, the final 4 features Florida, a school with a huge fanbase, but also a football school who has had recent success in revenue sports. Also participating is LSU, who is yet another football school, and whose fans might not have the dispensible income for a trip to Indianapolis with all that’s happened to Louisiana in the past 6 months. Finally, we have George Mason. While their enrollment is 28,874, many of these are commuter students who maybe pursuing second degrees. Also, the fact that the school is only 34 years old lends itself to having a smaller fanbase.
This isn’t a knock against any of the schools aforementioned. Noone could every seriously question the loyalty of LSU and Florida fans in my opinion. UCLA doesn’t need to prove it’s athletic history to anybody. And George Mason showed against UConn that they can easily fill an arena. I just thought it would be interesting to point out why tickets may have less demand this year.
