The excitement surrounding the women’s Final Four is soaring.
South Carolina attempting to complete an unbeaten season. Iowa’s Caitlin Clark versus Connecticut’s Paige Bueckers in the national semifinals. There are storylines galore.
If fans make the trek to Cleveland, they will have to pay a steep price for a ticket. The starting price for an all-session ticket — both semifinals Friday, and the championship Sunday — to the women’s Final Four was $710 as of Wednesday morning and will likely increase by Friday, according to StubHub. With service fees, it’s a get-in price of $965. The get-in price for Friday’s semifinals was $334, and the cheapest ticket to the championship game was $370 on StubHub (all before service fees).
The average ticket sale price on StubHub — including all-session, semifinal and championship ticket sales — was $718 as of Wednesday morning, a massive leap from last year’s average of $479.
Women’s Final Four tickets are also more expensive than the men’s Final Four in Glendale, Ariz. The men’s Final Four starting price for all session tickets is $608, according to StubHub, and the average ticket sale price is $702. But prices are also much higher for the men’s Final Four this year; the average ticket sale price a year ago on StubHub was $390.
Women’s Final Four sales outpaced last year’s sales on StubHub by 80 percent and were expected to surpass the 2023 total by the end of Wednesday.
One caveat in the ticket prices is the difference in stadium capacity size between the men’s and women’s Final Four. The men’s Final Four is played at State Farm Stadium, home to the Arizona Cardinals, with a capacity of more than 70,000. The men’s national semifinal and championship games haven’t been played in a basketball arena since 1996.
The women’s Final Four is played at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse, home of the Cleveland Cavaliers, which has a capacity of 19,432.
It isn’t surprising that fewer seats mean higher prices. But the ticket prices in Cleveland are an outlier compared to previous women’s Final Fours. In 2019, the women’s Final Four average ticket price was $104. In 2022, once the event returned to normal capacity after the COVID-19 pandemic, the average ticket price rose to $209. It jumped by $270 in 2023 to $479. For the 2024 women’s Final Four, the average ticket price increased by approximately 50 percent compared to last year. From 2019 to 2024, the average ticket price increased by 590.4 percent.
Clark certainly contributes to the high ticket prices. One of college basketball’s all-time greats, she rewrote the record books over four seasons at Iowa. Clark became the NCAA women’s basketball all-time leading scorer and eventually eclipsed Pete Maravich’s record for most points in Division I history, men’s or women’s.
If Clark is playing, she is a draw. Of the Hawkeyes’ 32 regular-season games this season, 30 sold out or set arena attendance records for women’s basketball. In Iowa City, tickets sold out for the Hawkeyes’ first- and second-round games in 30 minutes. And fans flocked to the Albany, N.Y., regional this past weekend to see Clark, as well as No. 1 South Carolina and defending national champion LSU.
Doors don’t open here for another 30 minutes but that hasn’t stopped fans from lining upside outside of MVP Arena for LSU-Iowa tonight @TheAthleticWBB pic.twitter.com/S9QB0OByBq
— Ben Pickman (@benpickman) April 1, 2024
Iowa’s win over LSU in the Elite Eight drew 12.3 viewers on ESPN. That shattered the record for the most watched women’s college basketball game — a record previously held by last year’s national championship game featuring Iowa and LSU (9.9 million).
StubHub spokesperson Adam Budelli said the platform expects a strong presence of Iowa fans at the Final Four in Ohio given the school’s proximity to Cleveland (552 miles). The number of tickets purchased on StubHub for the women’s Final Four from fans in Iowa surpasses those purchased from fans in North Carolina, Connecticut and South Carolina — where fellow Final Four-goers NC State, UConn and South Carolina hail from — combined.
UConn’s presence in the women’s Final Four also will impact ticket prices. The Huskies, 11-time national champions, have been the gold standard for success in the sport, but are chasing their first title since 2016.
According to Budelli, it speaks to the growth of women’s sports StubHub witnessed on its platform, stemming from last year.
“If you look in the past year since April, in the college game, so much excitement around Caitlin Clark,” Budelli said. “You have the Nebraska women’s volleyball team selling out a stadium for an outdoor game in the fall. It’s certainly been a perfect storm that led us to what’s going to be a phenomenal Final Four on the women’s side.”
The men’s Final Four sales more than doubled on StubHub compared to the same time last year, representing a 144 percent increase. The 2024 men’s Final Four sales surpassed the total for the 2018 and 2022 Final Fours, per StubHub. Compared to last year, the average price for an all-session men’s Final Four ticket increased by 55.9 percent in 2024.
The increased interest is driven by Purdue making its first Final Four since 1980, according to Budelli. The number of tickets purchased on StubHub from Indiana surpasses those purchased from fans in North Carolina, Connecticut and Alabama combined. Schools like Purdue, NC State and Alabama — who either haven’t made it to the Final Four in multiple decades or are making their first one — contribute to the ticket price increase.
The women’s Final Four takes place on Friday night with the national championship Sunday at 3 p.m. ET. The men’s Final Four is Saturday night with the national championship Monday at 9:20 p.m. ET.
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(Photo: Andy Lyons / Getty Images)
