College football fans hoping to witness history in person are being asked to pay a staggering ticket price.
Resale tickets for Monday’s College Football Playoff National Championship between Miami and Indiana have surged to extreme levels, turning attendance into a luxury reserved for the few.
The game at Hard Rock Stadium is effectively sold out through official channels. That has pushed demand into the secondary market, where prices have spiralled rapidly in the days leading up to kickoff.
Fan pays $26,000 for ticket
As of midweek, the cheapest pair of tickets sitting together in the upper bowl remained close to $2,900 on resale platforms such as StubHub and SeatGeek. Single seats, even in the highest rows, hovered near $3,000.
Lower-bowl tickets frequently listed around $5,000 each, while access to the exclusive 72 Club reached well beyond $20,000 per seat.
One fan reportedly paid $26,000 for a single ticket, setting a new high-water mark for a CFP title game.
That figure dwarfs recent years. Average resale prices last season sat closer to $3,400. In 2023 and 2022, fans could still get in for roughly $1,000.
Even those willing to absorb the ticket cost have faced another surprise.
Extortionate parking also an issue
Parking at Hard Rock Stadium has emerged as a story of its own. Listings briefly appeared online for as much as $747, with limited availability across nearby lots.
Prices dipped slightly as the week progressed, but many parking passes still sat near $700, with only one or two spots remaining per location.
Cheaper alternatives exist further from the stadium, though they come with shuttle rides and long walks. For fans already stretched by ticket prices, it has added another layer of frustration.
University of Miami students, who normally attend games for free, learned they would need to pay hundreds just to enter the stadium. Several reported long waits and website crashes before securing seats.
Prices near $400 to $500 quickly spread across campus, catching many off guard and prompting complaints from students who expected discounted access to the biggest game of the season.
College Football Playoff officials have defended their pricing model, noting that tickets are initially sold at competitive rates before the secondary market takes over.
“We look at pricing and we price our tickets competitively,” CFP executive director Rich Clark said. “Then they go to market and the market takes over from there.”
