ATLANTA (AP) — Notre Dame and Ohio State fans have had to endure unprecedented travel demands throughout college football’s first 12-team playoff to reach Monday night’s national championship game.

It would have been reasonable to worry that the prolonged postseason would have exhausted fans’ spending money before the final costs of reaching the championship game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

Instead, the first 12-team playoff has only fed ticket prices for the sellout. Ticket resale sites report prices start at about $1,800 and average as much as $2,500 for the championship game.

“We definitely expected demand to be up,” StubHub spokesperson Joseph Bocanegra said Thursday. “But I definitely don’t think we were expecting demand to be as big as it has been.”

Bocanegra said the average ticket price for the game on his site is $2,500, compared with an average of $1,800 for last year’s matchup between Michigan and Washington in Houston.

“It’s on track to be our best selling CFP national championship game in StubHub history,” Bocanegra said. “It’s actually already surpassed the final sales of every national championship game on StubHub.”

Vivid Seats, another ticket marketplace, reports the game is its “hottest college football ticket” since 2009, with an an average price of $2,269 and the least expensive at $1,452.

Ohio has lead in sales

Approximately 17% of sales on StubHub have come from the state of Ohio, according to Bocanegra, making it the runaway leader among states. He said Illinois was second at 6%, followed by Indiana at 4%.

That doesn’t mean Ohio State is a lock to have the most fans at the game.

Brett Daniels, senior director of communications for the CFP, said each school exhausted its allotment of 20,000 tickets as the game is designed to produce a “neutral site feeling.”

Fighting Irish boast big fan base

Notre Dame’s national fan base makes it difficult to predict the fan turnout based on sales by states. Vivid Seats predicts Notre Dame fans will make up 55% of the crowd on Monday night as the Fighting Irish look for their first national title since 1988.

“To be at a school like this and be able to represent a school like this and lead them to a national championship so far, it’s truly an honor and something I don’t take for granted,” Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard said Wednesday.

“I take a lot of pride in wearing the blue and gold. I know our fans for a very long time have been very loyal to this program, through the ups and downs since 1988. It would be an honor to deliver them another one.”

Counting the miles

The last time the national championship game was played in Atlanta following the 2017 season, Alabama beat Georgia 26-23 in overtime. It was a short drive for most fans.

This game is more of a test for fans, especially those determined to drive.

The drive from South Bend, Indiana, to Atlanta is about 675 miles and will take about 11 hours behind the wheel. It’s a slightly shorter drive for Ohio State fans from Columbus, Ohio — about 567 miles or 8 ½ hours.

It’s big, but not Super big

Bocanegra said “I don’t think I’ve seen a championship game like this” in terms of the demand and price for tickets in college sports.

It still falls short of the Super Bowl standard for top ticket prices.

“It’s certainly still lower than the Super Bowl,” Bocanegra said. “The lowest ticket price for the Super Bowl right now is around $4,000 to $5,000.”

Favored vs. the favorite

Ohio State opened as a 9 1/2-point favorite, according to BetMGM. The line was 8 1/2 points on Thursday.

Another betting site, BetOnline.ag, tracked posts on X to determine fans in almost every state were pulling for Notre Dame. The site said hashtags in more than 230,000 tweets showed that Ohio and West Virginia were the only states where a majority of tweets favored Ohio State. Most tweets from the other 48 states favored Notre Dame.

BetOnline.ag said Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Kentucky were the only states showing only a slim advantage for Notre Dame.

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