Miami, NCAA ticket sales fall way short
MIAMI (AP) – A typically hot ticket isn’t so hot in steamy Miami. About 5,000 tickets for Friday’s first-round NCAA tournament games in Miami remained unsold Thursday, making it almost certain the site will not have sellout crowds this weekend. Tickets were still available for $76 a session.
It’s not the only one of eight sites hosting first- and second-round tournament games that didn’t sell out, but ticket sales have been far slower than desired in Miami, where officials plan on drawing black curtains around parts of the highest level of the AmericanAirlines Arena to block out sections of would-be empty seats.
“It’s a combination of factors,” said Mike Sophia, the executive director of the Miami-Dade Sports Commission. “Certainly, we want to see a full house, but the way the seedings happened, that has an impact on your ticket sales. We don’t know what we’re going to see in walk-ups. We hope to see more people show up, but everybody’s sort of gauging what the economy’s doing to events like this.”
Wake Forest is the closest of the eight schools coming to Miami at 811 miles. Utah is 2,541 miles from the first-round site.