Indiana women's basketball ticket prices reach new heights for Caitlin Clark's visit

BLOOMINGTON — The No. 14 Indiana women’s basketball team’s loss to Illinois earlier this week has done little to dampen the excitement in Bloomington about the game against Iowa on Thursday night at Assembly Hall.

The stakes will be high for both teams as they compete for position atop the Big Ten and for seeding in the NCAA tournament. The latest bracket projections show IU (21-4; 12-3 Big Ten) at risk of falling outside the top 16 teams and not being a tournament host in the opening rounds.

Iowa's leading scorer Caitlin Clark is fresh off setting the NCAA women's career scoring mark.

The Hoosiers have lost two straight games to No. 4 Iowa (23-3; 12-2) and five of the last six in the series. The fans had it circled on the calendar long before the Hawkeyes ended IU’s 13-game win streak with an 84-57 win on Jan. 13.

The game was announced as the Hoosiers’ second-ever sell out on Jan. 3, and ticket prices on the secondary market have been on the rise ever since.

According to Stub Hub spokesperson, IU-Iowa has sold the fourth most tickets of any NCAA Women’s College Basketball game this season.

More: Mackenzie Holmes and Caitlin Clark turned Indiana-Iowa rivalry into must-see matchup

Tickets to see Indiana basketball play Iowa at Assembly Hall won’t come cheap

Indiana’s home attendance ranks second in the Big Ten behind Iowa and top 10 nationally.

The Hoosiers are averaging 9,303 fans this season in 13 games at Assembly Hall. They have drawn more than 10,000 fans three times this season including the season-high 13,304 fans who attended a 95-62 win over Purdue on Feb. 11.

As of Wednesday morning, there were only 29 listings for tickets on Stubhub for IU's game against Iowa.

The only tickets that cost less than $100 each were a pair of general admission tickets and there was only one other pair of tickets that cost less than $200. The average ticket price was $353 on the site. The most expensive tickets for the game listed on the site were $1,712 apiece in the lower zone of Section B.

StubHub had sold 245 listings in the past seven days.

The only tickets available under $100 at other secondary sellers including Seat Geek and Vivid Seats were single general admission tickets.

“Caitlin Clark’s impact is undeniable - the Hawkeyes are the best-selling women’s college basketball team on StubHub by a large margin,” spokesperson for StubHub Adam Budelli said. “The Hawkeyes played in the nine best-selling women’s college basketball games of the season, with five of these on the road, as fans of the sport want to witness one of college basketball’s greatest players.”

Caitlin Clark has made Iowa women’s basketball the hottest sporting event in the country

According to Iowa's sports information department, the program has helped sellout or break an attendance record in 30 of 32 games played this season. The only games that didn’t fall into either category came in the first round and championship game of the Gulf Coast Showcase.

Iowa has played in front of a sold out crowd on every Big Ten road trip (Wisconsin, Rutgers, Purdue, Ohio State, Northwestern, Nebraska and Maryland) and its remaining two road games in the conference (Indiana and Minnesota) are already sold out.

The average attendance for Iowa’s road games is 12,986 fans (nine games) and 13,688 fans in the Big Ten (seven games). The Hawkeyes have more than doubled the average conference attendance for each opponent they’ve visited and accounted for at least 25% of their total conference attendance.

The demand for tickets has significantly pushed up the prices in each of those markets.

According to Logitix, a ticket platform that collects data from secondary market sellers, tickets for Iowa’s road games this season are selling as much as 20 times higher compared to the team’s other home games.

The average ticket price for a Northwestern game at Welsh-Ryan Arena this season was $11.27 while the average ticket price (minus fees) for its game against Iowa on Jan. 31 was $224.30.

Michael Niziolek is the Indiana beat reporter for The Bloomington Herald-Times. You can follow him on X @michaelniziolek and read all his coverage by clicking here.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: IU women's basketball ticket prices soar for Caitlin Clark's visit