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College basketball is obviously at the center of the most notable NCAA Tournament to kick off in March, but there are also plenty of people interested in the hockey teams gunning for a spot in the Frozen Four based on the price of admission for a contest later this week.
On Sunday, the NCAA released the bracket that’s home to the 16 college hockey teams who will be playing for a national championship this year. Top-seeded Boston College looks like the squad to beat heading into the four-round tournament, but they’ll face some stiff competition from the rest of the field.
Later this week, four teams will head to one of the four arenas where the quarterfinals are slated to take place, including Amica Mutual Pavilion in Providence, Rhode Island (which can hold over 11,000 hockey fans), the Denny Sanford PREMIER Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota (10,600), and the MassMutual Center in Springfield, Massachusetts (6,800).
There’s also the Centene Community Ice Center outside of St. Louis Missouri, which boasts a relatively paltry seating arrangement that can accommodate around 2,500 spectators.
The decision to use that barn was already a fairly curious one before the NCAA announced which teams would be playing there, and it became even more perplexing when we learned it will play host to the North Dakota Fighting Hawks (who boasted the highest average attendance in the country this season with over 11,600 fans) as well as the Michigan State Spartans, who were sixth on that list with close to 6,500.
As Front Office Sports notes, this is a textbook case of supply not even being able to come close to matching demand, and we’ve subsequently been treated to a classic lesson in economics based on the staggering secondary price of the tickets that will let fans see Michigan State face off against Western Michigan before North Dakota takes the ice against Michigan during the Friday evening session.
As of this writing, a single standing-room-only ticket is the cheapest option on StubHub at $306, while the average ticket will set you back more than $1,700 as of this writing (the median price is closer to $1,150, and it appears someone pulled the trigger on a couple of seats that were listed for $1,415 a pop on Sunday).
If you’re curious, the cheapest tickets to attend a single Sweet 16 session are currently below the $300 mark (with some closer to $150).