Clemson fans drive up price for national title game tickets

Tickets prices have gone up almost 20 percent since Clemson and Alabama advanced to the College Football Playoff national championship game, driven to a large extent by demand among Tigers fans, according to USA Today.

The majority of the traffic on both TicketIQ and SeatGeek for the game is coming from the state of South Carolina.

Officials said the closer location of next Monday’s game in Tampa is appealing to both fan bases.

“We did the math and the average distance between Tampa and both schools is 579 miles,” TicketIQ spokesperson Jesse Lawrence told USA TODAY Sports. “The average distance to Arizona where last year’s game was held was about 2,000 miles. Since they’ll be driving instead of flying, there’s more money to spend on tickets.”

The average price for tickets sold on SeatGeek, another popular ticket site, as of Monday was $1,125.

This story was originally published January 2, 2017 at 4:28 PM with the headline "Clemson fans drive up price for national title game tickets."