The Super Bowl was less than a month ago, but it has already lost its crown as the most expensive sporting event so far this year.
That’s because Duke men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski is set to lead the Blue Devils for the last time in his 41-year career this Saturday. Tickets for the 75-year-old coach’s final game are going for thousands of dollars as fans angle to witness sporting history.
The cheapest tickets available for Saturday’s game on ticket broker StubHub as of Friday morning were going for $4,699 each for upper deck seats in the corner of Cameron Indoor Stadium in Durham, North Carolina. Including fees imposed by the site, those tickets will cost $5,829 a pop.
On rival ticket seller Vivid Seats, the cheapest available tickets cost a slightly cheaper $4,313 each — but only if you buy four together.
The most expensive seats, meanwhile, are going for more than $27,000 on StubHub and more than $17,000 on Vivid as of Friday.
Getting into last month’s Super Bowl in Los Angeles was comparatively expensive. The cheapest ticket sold for the Feb. 13 game cost $3,000, a StubHub representative .
Of course, SoFi Stadium where the Super Bowl was played has a capacity of 70,240, while Duke’s basketball arena is much smaller, seating 9,314 people.
Krzyzewski has been coaching at Duke since 1980 and is considered one of the greatest college basketball coaches of all time. Over the course of his career at the university, he won five national titles and is the first Division 1 men’s coach to lead his team to 1,000 wins. His 1,196 victories are the most in the history of men’s college basketball.
Krzyzewski announced in June that the 2021-22 season would be his final year with the Blue Devils. Beginning next year, the team will be taken over by associate head coach Jon Scheyer.
Duke will take on the University of North Carolina Tar Heels Saturday at 6 p.m. ET. The game will air on ESPN.
