Tickets to the CFP title game historically have been top dollar. This one might just top them all.

Fans at Monday's championship game between No. 1 Michigan and No. 2 Washington are paying an average of $2,500 a ticket on the secondary market.

by Kerith Gabriel

Published Jan. 4, 2024, 5:07 p.m. ET

It would appear one of the few things inflation hasn’t gotten some sports fans to second-guess is shelling out top dollar for the cost of a championship ticket.

That would particularly be true for college football in this case.

According to the ticketing tech firm Logitix, demand for tickets to Monday’s College Football Playoff title game between No. 1 Michigan and No. 2 Washington is up 41% compared to last year’s championship between top-ranked Georgia and No. 3 Texas Christian.

According to Logitix, which looks at the number of sold tickets and analyzes whether prices are rising or falling on the secondary market in real time, fans at this year’s final in Houston are paying an average of $2,596 per ticket on the secondary market.

According to some sites, it would have been even more if Texas had pulled off the upset of Washington.

In the same window, in advance of last year’s title game, fans spent an average of $1,843 per ticket.

Jason Sampson, a Michigan graduate, said he “bleeds” the Maize and Blue colors of the Wolverines. After his team defeated Alabama, Sampson said he had begun casually planning a trip to Houston to be at NRG Stadium for Monday’s game. Missing out on the presale opportunity, Sampson, an Abington resident and electrician, decided to try his luck on the secondary marketplace and was shocked at what he saw.

“They were asking like $700 for nosebleeds on like every site,” said Sampson, who noted he also recently became a father, claiming he looked at secondary sites like StubHub and SeatGeek, and even Ticketmaster’s secondary marketplace. “I did the quick math in my head and it would’ve been like a $2,000 trip once you factor in flight and hotel and food and stuff. And here’s the crazy thing, that $2K per person would have been if we flew in the same day. I’d love to be there, but that’s just not realistic for me right now.”

But it would appear that the frenzy began long before both teams booked their tickets to Monday game (7:30 p.m., ESPN). Logitix claims that Monday’s semifinal games combined for the highest number of tickets sold for on the secondary marketplace in the history of the College Football Playoff.

The average cost of the ticket for those who witnessed Washington defeat Texas in the Rose Bowl? $756.28. Watching the Wolverines defeat Alabama proved a bit tamer — but not by much — with a $607.66 asking price.

Michigan was the draw the last time CFP semifinal prices soared when its 2021 appearance in the Orange Bowl against Georgia reached an average price of $705.16 per ticket. In 2022, the Wolverines were the team yet again in the Fiesta Bowl against TCU, with fans of both sides shelling out an average of $534.91 per ticket.

“I’ll be watching it, and I’ll be just as loud as I had planned to be if I was there because I feel like this is going to be our year,” Sampson said. “But it’ll be from the couch. And I was prepared to choose between making this trip and staying back, but I have a young family, I just can’t justify dropping that amount of money on one game right now. I don’t know how some people do it.”