NCAA women’s Final Four ticket prices are higher than the men’s
Tickets for the NCAA women’s basketball Final Four games on Friday have surged since the matchups were finalized, becoming more expensive than tickets for the men’s Final Four.
As of Thursday, the cheapest resale tickets for Friday’s games on Ticketmaster are $218, which covers admission to both games. Tickets to sit in the first row behind the courtside seats cost $2,200, and one reseller is asking $3,999 for tickets to sit 12 rows back.
Tickets to the women’s championship are going for as low as $150 but also as high as $3,999, despite the two teams playing in the game not being determined yet.
Attending the men’s Final Four on Saturday is much more affordable. Resale tickets are available for as low as $40 in the nosebleed sections, according to Ticketmaster. Getting closer to the action on the court could cost fans up to $5,000.
A seat at the championship is even cheaper, only costing fans $39. Most of the tickets in the lower level for what Ticketmaster considers the “best seats” cost between $1,034 to $2,500.
Who is playing in the NCAA women’s Final Four?
Friday’s games start with a matchup between LSU and Virginia Tech, two programs experiencing a historic season.
LSU is making its first trip to the Final Four since 2008, which is also the last time the team had a 31-win season, according to CBS Sports.
For Virginia Tech, this year marks the Hokies’ first Final Four appearance, and this season was only the second time the program advanced to the Sweet 16, ESPN reported.
Defending champions South Carolina will face off against the Iowa Hawkeyes, including star Caitlin Clark, in what The Athletic called the matchup “the sport deserves.”
South Carolina’s Dawn Staley, this year’s Naismith Women’s Coach of the Year, will look to continue her team’s 42-game winning streak that dates back to last season. To do so, she’ll have to develop a game plan to stop Clark, the 2023 Naismith Women’s College Player of the Year.
The South Carolina-Iowa game will feature the NCAA’s top offensive and defensive teams. The Hawkeyes are averaging 87.6 points per game, and the Gamecocks are only allowing their opponents to score 50.4 points per game.
In Iowa’s Elite Eight win over Louisville, Clark recorded the first 40-point triple-double in NCAA men’s or women’s tournament history and was responsible for 72% of her team’s offense, according to CBS Sports.
Why are tickets for the women’s Final Four more expensive than the men’s?
Unlike the men’s Final Four, the women’s includes top-seeded teams and big-name players and programs. For the first time since seeding was used in 1979, no top-three seeded teams will be playing in the men’s Final Four, according to Yahoo! Sports.
A ticket to the women’s championship weekend provides basketball fans with the chance to see the biggest names in women’s college basketball, like Clark, South Carolina’s Aliyah Boston and LSU’s Angel Reese.
The demand for tickets should come as no surprise based on TV viewership numbers for the women’s tournament. Almost 2.5 million fans tuned into ESPN on Sunday to watch Clark and Iowa beat Louisville. That’s more than the viewership for any NBA game on ESPN this season, Yahoo! Sports reported.
Another reason for the ticket price disparity is the difference in venues.
The women’s championship weekend is being played in the smaller 20,000-seat American Airlines Center, where the Dallas Mavericks play, compared to the larger NRG Stadium, which will host the men’s championship weekend.
NRG Stadium last hosted the Final Four in 2016 and had an announced attendance of 75,505, according to Front Office Sports.
