Supply and demand – that’s the easiest way to sum up the issues surrounding tickets for the NCAA Championships in Pittsburgh this March.

Although the supply has been relatively stable over the past two decades, the demand has spiked significantly this season.

Minnesota head coach Brandon Eggum tweeted on Wednesday about the situation, asking FloWrestling to look into it. I responded with a few questions of my own for Eggum, and eventually went to the NCAA to seek answers.

 

@FloWrestling ask @ncaawrestling what they are going to do about robbing most programs supporters/fans by allotting 50% of tickets they requested/sold for The 2019 championships @PPGPaintsArena ? We are not growing the sport by hosting in an arena that only has 16k seats!

— Brandon Eggum (@BrandonEggum) January 16, 2019

 

I knew there was plenty of excitement surrounding the tournament here in Pennsylvania – people have been asking me for two years if I could get them tickets (I can’t) – but I couldn’t understand why it should be so much of an issue nationally. After all, PPG Paints Arena is similar in size to the arenas that have hosted NCAAs the past few years.

An email to Matthew Holmes, the NCAA’s assistant director of championships and alliances, clarified that while Quicken Loans could have a few thousand more seats for wrestling than PPG – last year’s finals in Cleveland set an attendance record – they’re not too much different.

 

9,000 less seats then last year is what was explained. Need to ask them. I’m hearing from coaches across the country who are asking if we have any extra. We were allowed 240 of the 600 we requested. We are hosting 2020 @usbankstadium big difference!

— Brandon Eggum (@BrandonEggum) January 16, 2019

 

Lingering Questions

 

Still, the confusion on Twitter seemed to persist, so I spoke with Holmes on Thursday to clear up any lingering confusion.

Holmes, who has worked for the NCAA for the past five tournaments, said that each year schools that field Division I programs request a number of tickets for the event.

“That total number of requests has been roughly under 15,000 requests,” Holmes told me. “Typically, the number of tickets available is around 10,000.”

The NCAA was able to fulfill the requests for schools that requested 100 tickets or fewer. Those that asked for between 100 and 500 tickets usually got 80 percent of their requests filled, and those that sought more than 500 received 70 percent of their request.

“Traditionally the vast majority of schools were requesting less than 100 tickets,” Holmes said.

This year, the number of requests for tickets from the Division I programs shot up 67 percent, according to Holmes.

“What happened this year, the same amount of tickets is available, but instead of somewhere around 15,000 requests, we received over 25,000 requests,” he said. “That necessitated that everybody received less tickets than they normally received in their allocation.”

 

Changing the Formula

 

It also forced the NCAA to revise how it handles those requests.

“This year, that formula we used didn’t work when trying to split 25,000 requests down to 10,000 (available tickets),” Holmes said.

Instead, it reverted to a previously used system that takes into account how a team performed at last year’s NCAA Tournament. So Penn State, which won the team title, would get more tickets in this allocation system than Minnesota, which finished tied for 17^th, and the Golden Gophers would receive more than 40th-place Penn.

“The demand from the schools always surpasses inventory, but this year, it’s exciting that the interest is there,” Holmes said. “We tried to come up with a transparent way to explain that to the schools.”

In other words, the sport’s growing popularity is a good problem to have – unless you’re stuck without a ticket.

 

Banking on Bigger Crowds

 

As Eggum pointed out in one of his tweets, the NCAA Championships will be held at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis next year, which could present a turning point for NCAA wrestling. Unlike venues used for the past two decades – which house NHL and NBA teams – U.S. Bank Stadium is home to the Minnesota Vikings. Its seating capacity is triple or even quadruple that of PPG Paints Arena and its brethren.

Next year’s event will give us a better idea of how much demand there really is for NCAA tickets. Could we see a crowd of 25,000, or even up to 40,000? It’s possible, but I wonder where fans will draw the line.

I know what it’s like to try to watch a wrestling match from the last row of a hockey arena. I’m not sure how the setup will be in a football stadium – obviously all of the seats won’t be available – but at some point it becomes a situation where it the mat is too far away and fans just watch on the big screen.

That’s something to keep in mind for next year. For now, fans can look forward to the best wrestlers in the nation coming to Pittsburgh – and hoping they can get a ticket to see them in action.