Make wishtv.com your home page

Final Four fans should expect expensive last-minute ticket prices

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – If fans are expecting to buy last-minute tickets, they should expect to pay a very expensive price. There are lots of tickets still on the market, but high demand has pushed ticket prices higher.

As of Friday morning, fans should expect to pay at least $400 for a ticket. The tickets will likely be upper level, directly behind the basket. Lower level tickets may even reach $4,000.

Ticket prices have soared since Indianapolis hosted the Final Four five years ago.

“Price-wise, we’re roughly about double what it was in 2010. It’s just a totally different dynamics. It’s just really unusual to have three big, state schools with huge followings within driving distance to a Final Four,” said Circle City Tickets owner Mike Peduto.

Butler was in the tournament last time Indy hosted. Because Butler is so small compared to this year’s teams, there were more tickets available, which made the prices lower. This year, Peduto said the schools are so big fans are using most, if not all of their schools’ ticket allotments. Circle City Tickets will be selling tickets through Monday afternoon.

IMPD and experts are warning fans to watch out for ticket scams. If you’re wanting to buy them from sellers on the street, be careful. In Indianapolis, sellers are supposed to have a permit to sell any game tickets. To make sure you’re not getting scammed, ask to see the permit.

You can also look on sites like Stub Hub, though the cheapest ticket was $461 as of Friday morning. Circle City Tickets told 24-Hour News 8 websites like Stub Hub have completely changed their business model.

“Everything being automated, what it’s done is it’s really made the pricing very competitive. So when I talked about how our business has changed, we have to do a lot more volume and our margins are much tighter. Before, on certain seats you could wait and get your price. Now the idea is to buy at a fair price, sell them at a minimal markup and just turn over a lot of seats. It’s really, like a lot of industries, made the pricing very, very competitive,” said Peduto.  “The other side, it allows us to have very little waste. We can, because there are so many avenues to sell the tickets, we can drop our price a little and move through seats a lot when there are a lot of sellers in an event like this.”

“Flash Seats” have also changed the way tickets are sold. Fans buy Flash Seats online, but will not receive a paper ticket. Instead fans can just scan their ID and get into the game. This makes it safer for fans and harder for scammers. Fans can still transfer tickets to another person online if they want to buy or sell Flash Seats.

Since no Indiana teams are in the Final Four, if people just want to be a part of the excitement, Peduto suggests waiting until the championship game on Monday. Peduto said tickets will likely be half the price of Saturday’s games.

“The fans always say, ‘Oh no we’re going to go [Monday] win or lose,’ and I’ve been there as an IU fan. After your team loses, you’re like ‘forget it. Let’s go.’ So a lot of those people are selling tickets, a lot of people come in and maybe can’t stay. You have half as many fans chasing the seats as you do for the Saturday. So Saturday’s always much bigger,” said Peduto.