College Football Playoff Site Selling Nonrefundable Ticket Reservations

The Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl Semifinal games are still weeks away, but ticket prices are already announced for students of each respective school should their team make it to the College Football Playoff Championship – and they’re not cheap.

A website called collegefootballplayoff.com is selling ticket reservations, or what they call CFP RSVPs, that “guarantees you the right to purchase a ticket to the game at face value if your team qualifies”. The prices for RSVPs are not the price for your ticket, will not be applied towards to the price of your ticket, and will not be refunded should your team lose in the semifinals on New Year’s Day. RSVP prices are as follows, and range by seat location:

• Alabama Crimson Tide: $569.79 – $3,510.00
• Clemson Tigers: $760.50 – $3,510.00
• Oklahoma Sooners: $359.19 – $3,510.00
• Georgia Bulldogs: $947.70 – $6,435.00

The ticket price on top of that would be $475 for upper level and $575 for lower level. The site states that:

“Multiple options are available for the same Tier (Upper or Lower level). Regardless of the prices, all “Upper Level” and all “Lower Level” are each for the same class of seating within the Tier.
Customers who have already purchased an RSVP are allowed to relist the RSVP for sale at any price of their choosing. For any tier, i.e., “Lower Level”, all RSVP’s for a given team and game are the same.
When inventory at the current default prices runs out, the only way to purchase an RSVP will be to purchase those higher priced listings.”

The site is run by SIDEARM Sports, a college athletics website provider whose only client of the four is Alabama, but it links to all the verified social media pages of the CFP and is the first result on Google for College Football Playoff Championship tickets. Still, Ticketmaster says it is the only official provider of CFP tickets. No face value tickets exist on Ticketmaster; verified resale tickets start at $1,650.

It seems you’ll be paying an arm and a leg no matter where you get your tickets. The excessive price, and especially the fact that you could be out hundreds or thousands of dollars if your team doesn’t make it, will likely out-price a good many fans from the game.

The College Football Playoff Championship takes place on January 8 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.