Don’t have a ticket to see USC or Clemson in a bowl, you might want to keep waiting
South Carolina and Clemson fans who want to see their favorite college football teams play their bowl games might want to wait a little longer before buying tickets.
It might even be worth spoiling that Christmas stocking stuffer you had in mind for your favorite superfan.
That’s because the average cost of tickets is dropping for both the Outback Bowl, where the Gamecocks will face the Michigan Wolverines, and the Sugar Bowl, which is one of the College Football Playoff semifinal games between the Tigers and Alabama Crimson Tide.
Fans who wait as long as possible to get tickets on the secondary market could be rewarded for their patience with lower prices.
Ticket prices have dropped for both games, according to TickPick. The secondary marketplace has shown a significant drop in ticket prices for the Outback and Sugar bowls.
Based on historical data, the prices are expected to continue dwindling as the games draw closer.
When the Outback Bowl rematch between South Carolina and Michigan was announced Dec. 3, the average purchase price started at $206, according to TickPick.
Eleven days later, TickPick listed the average ticket price for Outback Bowl at $166. That’s a drop of 19 percent.
Part of the drop in ticket price is because of the good amount of tickets available on the secondary market. There are currently 1,971 tickets available on TickPick’s site.
An example of the stagnant market can be found in some of the Wolverines’ most sought after fans. Michigan released tickets to students/season ticket holders in one section at the price of $180 per ticket. On TickPick, the average cost for seats in that section is $134.
The fact that this is a rematch of second-tier bowl game played five years ago could be hurting enthusiasm for the tickets. The fact that the bowl game played in Tampa isn’t exactly close to either team’s campus could also be a factor.
Raymond James Stadium is 480 miles from South Carolina, a pretty long car trip, but maybe too close to deter fans from buying airline tickets to go to the game.
Michigan is 1,175 miles from the Outback Bowl, and because of that and the large inventory of available tickets, TickPick expects tickets to drop steadily up until the game.
The same is expected for the Sugar Bowl, where prices have fallen even farther. The fact that this is the third year in a row Clemson and Alabama are facing each other in the playoff could be hurting the average ticket price.
But because it’s a semifinal game, not the national championship as was the case in 2016 and 2017, is likely the biggest factor in the plummeting ticket prices.
Both fan bases might be holding out for the national championship game, according to TickPick, which expects the winner of the Sugar Bowl to head to Atlanta as a favorite to win the CFP title.
Tickets for the national championship game are still going at an extremely high rate, even without knowing which teams will be playing. Tickets for that contest are currently an average of $3,612, TickPick reported.
The Sugar Bowl hasn’t fared as well. When the matchup for the Jan. 1 game in New Orleans was announced, the average ticket price was $622, according to TickPick. On Dec. 14, that price was $523, a drop of 15 percent.
There were 4,508 tickets available to the Sugar Bowl on TickPick as of Thursday night.
In 2015, the last time the Sugar Bowl was a CFP semifinal, the prices dropped by 61 percent the day of the game, TickPick reported.
The most expensive game outside of the national championship game is currently the Rose Bowl between the Oklahoma Sooners and Georgia Bulldogs. Tickets for “The Granddaddy of Them All” are selling for an average of $625, according to TickPick.
This story was originally published December 14, 2017 at 7:26 PM with the headline "Don’t have a ticket to see USC or Clemson in a bowl, you might want to keep waiting."