Your inbox approves 🥇 On sale now 🥇 🏈's best, via 📧 Chasing Gold 🥇
SPORTS
March Madness

The worst seats in the house at the Final Four

Josh Peter
USA TODAY Sports

HOUSTON — John West, a real estate broker in Houston, went shopping online for Final Four tickets with location, location, location in mind.

Section 752 at NRG Stadium ... definitely not courtside. Although the court is somewhat visible.

“I wanted to get the worst, cheapest tickets in the house," he told USA TODAY Sports.

And he got them — or darn close — for $66 apiece.

Sandwiched between his 12-year-old daughter Hannah and 16-year-old son David, West sat in Section 752, Row R and seat 16 in the highest reaches of the 71,500-capacity NRG Stadium when Villanova defeated Oklahoma and North Carolina knocked off Syracuse on Saturday night.

Armour: Syracuse's pressure doesn't faze North Carolina

The idea that he would have spent thousands of dollars for the high-priced real estate courtside struck him as nonsensical.

“I never direct my clients to buy the most expensive house in the neighborhood," said West, 52, and there was a time when the NCAA had essentially one middle-class neighborhood at the Final Four.

Until 1971, the Final Four was held strictly in arenas and attendance for the championship game never topped 20,000. But that year, it was held here in the Astrodome, and 31,765 watched UCLA beat Villanova in the title game as the shift began. Bigger venues, more seats, more tickets, more money.

Since 2000, recorded attendance for the championship game has never dipped below 43,000. Attendance has topped for 70,000 each of the past seven years.

The NCAA declined to provide ticket revenue figures or historical ticket prices, other than to say the ticket price range per session this year is approximately $100 to $275 and five years ago was $80 to $200.

About half of the tickets for the Final Four this year, being played in the home of the NFL’s Houston Texans, were available through the NCAA’s lottery. West, having decided the day before the semifinal games that he wanted to take his children, had to opt for the secondary market. Shopping online, he said he saw a ticket priced at $56,000 and continued to search for less expensive tickets before settling on “cheapest" available.

“My budget’s been blown because we just got back from Disney World," West said. “But it being my hometown, I had to go (to the Final Four). Once in a lifetime event, I was telling my kids this morning"

Joe Biden at Final Four: 'Those cheerleaders are athletes, man'

As tipoff for the Villanova-Oklahoma game approached, a horn section — trombones, saxophones and tuba — blasted from the general direction of the basketball court far below.

“You can certainly hear the band,’’ West said. “It sounds great.’’

But something else was music to the ears of West’s children.

“I promised them I would’t get my Texans season tickets in this location,’’ he said. “I will get them closer."

Featured Weekly Ad