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| BATON ROUGE, LA – OCTOBER 17: College Football Playoff National Championship Trophy presented by Dr Pepper is seen at Tiger Stadium on October 17, 2015 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. (Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images) |
Fear not, out-of-towners. Traveling costs are directly affecting the secondary ticket market, and Monday’s game is now the cheapest championship game on average in the last six years. The get-in price, or cheapest available ticket, is the second lowest for a title game since at least 2010. Should the lofty costs of traveling continue to increase, this year’s championship game could become the cheapest ever by a wide margin.
According to Priceline.com, the cheapest roundtrip flight from Birmingham to Phoenix, departing on January 10 and returning January 12, is now $1,730.20 via American Airlines. That is 8.3% more expensive than Thursday’s cheapest flight, which was priced at $1,598 through United Airlines. From New Orleans, American, United and Delta are offering roundtrip flights from $805.20-$1,975.70.
Roundtrip airfare from South Carolina won’t be much cheaper. If flying out of Greenville Spartanburg International Airport the cheapest flight to Phoenix is now listed for $1,505.20. Last year, the airfare from Columbus, Ohio to Dallas ranged from $492-559 while a roundtrip flight out of Oregon was around $1,000.
Ticket aggregator TiqIQ currently lists the average price for 2016 College Football Championship Game tickets at $674.81, marking a 52.2% drop from the $1,410.35 average on New Year’s Eve. It is now 42% cheaper on average than the inaugural College Football Playoff National Championship game last year, which averaged a $1,124.44 ticket. Since 2010, when TiqIQ began collecting secondary market data, only 2014’s game between Auburn and Florida State at the Rose Bowl owned a lower average price of $479.27 the day prior to kickoff. It is certainly possible that this year’s game could drop below that price, as the average has more than halved over the last week-and-a-half.
If looking just to get past the gates at University of Phoenix Stadium on Monday the cheapest ticket is now $202, down 65.9% from the New Year’s Eve price of $587. That makes this year’s game the second least expensive to get into since the turn of the decade, but not by much. The record low came in 2014 at $198.
For those enticed by the low ticket prices, many deals still exist on hotels in Glendale on Priceline. Three-star hotels begin from just $55 per night while lower-rated hotels start from just $44 per night. If searching for a four-star rating or higher, hotels can be found from $189 per night.
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