Tennessee football: With College GameDay coming, Florida ticket prices soar

It’s Florida week, and Tennessee football is riding a wave of momentum that hasn’t been felt in six years. The Vols’ matchup with the Gators was sold out before their matchup with the Akron Zips and before it was revealed that ESPN College GameDay would be coming into town.

Now, with those two factors in play and this being a top 25 matchup, Neyland Stadium is expected to be rocking. That’s reflected in ticket prices too. There’s no secondary ticket market you can go to right now in which tickets are less than $240 a person.

Those prices are old-school Tennessee football right there. Many fans remember trying to go to UTSports to get tickets to games when they first went on sale, back in the early 2000s, and seeing the site crash because there was such a rush to get them. UT appears to be back in that spot.

On Stubhub, the cheapest ticket Thursday afternoon was $256. Nothing in the lower bowl was below $300. Probably the cheapest tickets on notable secondary markets were Vivid Seats, which did have tickets for sale at $242. SeatGeek wasn’t far behind with prices starting at $243.

Ticketmaster was starting at $276, and TickPick was an insanely high $308. Simply put, Tennessee-Florida is once again a hot commodity. We should’ve seen this coming when the Vols sold out against Akron, but now it’s getting crazy.

By the way, in case you’re curious, no, this isn’t par for the course when it comes to home games on Rocky Top. The most expensive home game still on the schedule for them right now after Florida is the Third Saturday in October against the Alabama Crimson Tide.

Those tickets are running as low as $189 right now, and that’s including the fact that Alabama fans are scooping them up. In terms of home and road games for the season, the only one more expensive is their trip to the Georgia Bulldogs, with the lowest tickets above $400. However, UGA is No. 1 right now.

In UT’s home game against the UT-Martin Skyhawks, you can actually get tickets for as low as $20. They have cheaper road tickets available when facing the LSU Tigers and South Carolina Gamecocks. South Carolina tickets are actually running under $50 right now. Tickets against the Vanderbilt Commodores are actually cheaper.

This stands as proof that all you have to do is give Vol fans a little bit of hope. UT 3-0, ranked No. 11 in the AP Poll and No. 12 in the Coaches Poll. Florida, meanwhile, is 2-1, ranked No. 20 in the AP Poll and No. 22 in the Coaches Poll. UT is a 10.5-point favorite according to WynnBET, and fans are still clamoring for the tickets.

Simply put, Tennessee football vs. Florida is once again a huge draw, and it’s been made even bigger by everything that’s happening on Rocky Top this week. Tickets are likely to continue going up leading up to Saturday’s 3:30 p.m. ET kickoff, so watch out.