NCAA Tournament Drives Ticket Resale March Madness

NEW ORLEANS -- (MainStreet) -- For college basketball fans, there's only one thing bigger than their team going to the Big Dance: the big demand for tickets once they've made it.

The NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament is unique in the sports world not only for its 68-team format, play-in games and seeding, but also its approach to doling out tickets. Only 30% of all tournament tickets are available to the general public, with the remaining 70% divided among the Final Four schools and their discounted, ID-only student sections (25%), the Division I Institutions and Coaches Associations (15%), the host cities (10%), NCAA committees (10%), broadcast and corporate partners such as CBS(CBS) , Coca-Cola(KO) , AT&T(T) and Capital One(COF) (5%) and the NCAA's luxury hospitality packages (5%). Even when tickets sneak onto the secondary market, their prices and availability can fluctuate far more wildly than those of other major sports.

Brandon Davies of the Brigham Young Cougars drives to the basket Tuesday in Dayton, Ohio, in the first round of the NCAA men's basketball tournament.

"When you put it into perspective with the Super Bowl or with the NFL playoffs or the NBA or NHL playoffs, it's a much slower and different dynamic," says Joellen Ferrer, spokeswoman for eBay(EBAY) -owned ticket resale site StubHub. "With the Super Bowl, you've got a week to do things, with the others you have a series to deal with, so there's less of a day-to-day, hour-by-hour changing marketplace."