In the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament, the first two rounds are hosted by top-four regional seeds. Though not guaranteed, the home court advantage does increase teams’ chances of making it to the second weekend of the tournament.
The University of Iowa women’s basketball team has hosted in the previous four tournaments and hosts again in 2024; to no one’s surprise, tickets sold out immediately, as the Caitlin Clark effect sold out all home regular seaason games before their first game. My wife and I attended the 2022 tournament games but are not paying secondary-market prices (as I write this, all-session tickets start at $1000 each!).
Ignoring the First Four teams, Princeton and West Virginia also play in Iowa City, perhaps they have tickets to sell: I assume all teams are allotted tickets and that it is unlikely their fans travel to Iowa City. Sunday night, West Virginia’s was updated to indicate they had nothing to sell. I called Princeton’s ticket office first thing Monday morning and discovered they too had nothing. Very surprised.
The only mention of ticketing I can find is on a Gonzaga athletics page from 2010 which says schools are allocated 550 tickets each for the first two rounds. Finally got an answer from Holy Cross ticket office – a First Four team – who said that Iowa is responsible for all ticketing, so no chance for other schools, likely a sellout before brackets were released.
Regardless, guaranteed to be a raucous crowd on Saturday and Monday.
Image Credits
- “JD Scott-MGoBlog-Michigan Women’s Basketball-University of Iowa-2.6.22-17” by MGoBlog is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
