The Cotton Bowl and Notre Dame Bowl Game Ticket Prices This Decade

This probably won’t come as a surprise to most people, but tickets to the 2018 Cotton Bowl game between the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the Clemson Tigers aren’t cheap. In fact, a ticket to the College Football Playoff semifinal is one of the highest priced Notre Dame bowl game tickets since 2010.

TicketIQ aggregates ticket prices from all over the internet. The site shows users the lowest listed price on any secondary market for a ticket to a given game. On Friday morning, the cheapest ticket available to the Cotton Bowl on December 29th was $225. Since Friday morning, that price has risen to over $250. The only ticket to a bowl game that included Notre Dame that has been more expensive this decade was the BCS National Championship game against Alabama back in January of 2013.

The fact that this game and the 2013 championship game are the most expensive isn’t too shocking. It is somewhat surprising, however, that the third most expensive bowl ticket in this time frame is so significantly cheaper. The cheapest ticket on the secondary market for the 2016 Fiesta Bowl against Ohio State was only $80.

When the Irish made the Sun Bowl back in 2010 with Brian Kelly at the helm for the first time, tickets for that game in El Paso were dirt cheap with some fans getting in for only $19. Over the last eight years, ticket demand has changed for a variety of reasons. Long travel and overall prestige of the bowl itself can also play a role in influencing ticket prices.

The average price of a ticket to this year’s Cotton Bowl according to TicketIQ is $666. Interestingly, when Alabama and Michigan State played in the Cotton Bowl on New Year’s Eve 2015 (also a CFB Playoff semifinal), the average price of a ticket to that game was just $137.

While we’re probably trying not to get too far ahead of ourselves, let’s look at this year’s national championship game. The cheapest secondary market listing for that game right now is between $700 and $750. The average asking price for a ticket to that game is $1,971.

So far, that price is significantly lower than most of the championship games played this decade. The get-in price for last season’s national championship game between Alabama and Georgia was $1,752.

How much would you pay to see this game? What’s the most you’ve ever paid to see the Irish play? Let us know in the comments.