Seed Are Set As Demand For NCAA Tournament Tickets Grows
The seeds are set, matchups determined and brackets are ready to be filled out, yes my friend March Madness is finally upon us. With yesterday being Selection Sunday it is officially that time of the year to print out all of your brackets and use every ounce your basketball knowledge to fill out a bracket that will (hopefully) win you whatever NCAA Tournament pool you belong to.
Its safe to say that there is no other tournament like the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament which gathers together the top 68 teams in Division 1 and pits them all against each other until there is a true, definite National Champion unlike college football which doesn’t use a playoff system to crown its National Champion. What separates the NCAA Tournament from every other one out there is the upsets that come each year and the madness that ensues, which is how it earned the moniker March Madness.
The top seeds of this years tournament are Florida (top overall), Arizona, Wichita State and Virginia all of whom have project to make a deep run with Wichita State entering the tournament as the only undefeated team in the country. In fact the Shockers haven’t even lost since last years Final Four and look to shock the world by becoming the first team to run the table since the 1991 UNLV Runnin Rebels who took home a National Championship. There are a few play-in games Tuesday and Wednesday but the real action kicks off on Thursday when the tournament goes into full effect and when it does you will find NCAA Tournament tickets going for an average of $292 this year. Eventually this will lead down to the Final Four in Arlington, Texas at AT&T Stadium where the Dallas Cowboys play on April 5th with the Championship Game commencing there two days later on April 7th.
After the NCAA Tournament wraps up and crowns a National Champion there will be no mega-sporting events akin to March Madness until the World Cup takes place this summer in Brazil. The World Cup is the single largest sporting event on the planet; bigger than March Madness, bigger than the Olympics and yes, even bigger than the Super Bowl. When the World Cup begins this summer it will have a very high average ticket price of $1,134 for World Cup tickets.
At the World Cup it is customary for the host nation to play in the opening game of the tournament and this year is no different with Brazil hosting Croatia on June 12th. This game is going for nearly double the average price of the tournament at $2,252 while most games of the first round are priced between $500 and $600. The United States were drawn into a very tough group and will have to be at the top of their game if they hope to be one of the two teams to advance out of Group G that includes powerhouse countries Germany and Portugal as well as the team that knocked them out of the 2010 World Cup Ghana.
The United States begins group play with Ghana on June 16th wherein tickets are going for $593 and will go on to play Portugal and Germany in games that are averaging $526 and $703 respectively. The American squad should beat Ghana and if they can pull the upset over Portugal or Germany they will be very likely to make it out of the Group Stage. Make sure to tune in to both the NCAA Tournament this month and World Cup later on this summer.
