College Football Ticket Information
Come August campuses all over the country will undergo massive changes in the atmosphere as school spirit fills the air in preparation for the 2016-17 college football season. While spirit and enthusiasm are atop the checklist for attending a college football game, perhaps one of the more unescapable items is the game day ticket. Ticket prices in college football are reliant on many factors including a team’s schedule, expected performance, and past performance.
The road to the 3rd College Football Playoff is about to get underway, and fans from the nation's largest schools are clamoring for the best seats at the top games. Notre Dame leads the pack in terms of highest ticket prices, with the Fighting Irish coming in with a median ticket price of $287, driven in large part by their marquee matchups against Michigan State, Stanford and Miami. The Ohio State Buckeyes came in just behind Notre Dame with a median ticket price of $249, almost double the next highest Big Ten team, the Iowa Hawkeyes, who have a median ticket price of $142. In the SEC, the Alabama Crimson Tide take the lead with a median ticket price of $205; following closely behind in the SEC is Texas A&M, LSU, and Georgia, all holding a median ticket price over $150.
Sports rivalries in general usually drive a ticket price up, but when it comes to rivalry games in the NCAA no sport comes close to replicating the hype surrounding games like the Red River Showdown, Iron Bowl, or The Big Game. When the Texas Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners head to Cotton Bowl Stadium for the Red River Showdown it not only creates a demand to close to double both teams' median ticket price, but has also become one of the most expensive games of the season at $278 a seat. Other big rivalry games of the 2016 college football season that could see similar effects include Alabama – Tennessee, Army – Navy, and Florida – Georgia. If any of these big rivalries are on your 2016 college football check list securing a seat early is one of the best ways to keep the cost of attending at a reasonable price. The start of the college football season brings the top kickoff games like the Chick-fil-a Kickoff which had an average ticket price of $188 dollars in 2016 and the Texas Kickoff Classic that had a slightly lower ticket average in 2016 of $99.
Average ticket prices can also be manipulated by the departure and or arrival of personnel. Georgia Bulldogs for instance will kick the season off with a median ticket price of $160, a rise from last season due to the arrival of head coach Kirby Smart. Similarly, the Houston Cougars saw their median ticket price significantly rise from $29 to $65 coming into the 2016-17 NCAA football season, due largely to an Atlantic Coast Conference Championship title in 2015. Other schools have experienced the opposite effect, like Tennessee Volunteers, who welcome uncertainty with new defensive coordinator Bob Shoop, with median ticket prices on the drop to $79.
Ticket prices based on averages as of June 30, 2016