8 Most Expensive Sports Championship Tickets

Final Four
2012 average ticket price (championship game only): $414

That price more than doubles if you factor in two games in the previous round, but that's impressive even for the title game alone. Having storied programs such as Kentucky and Kansas in the final certainly helped, as does having blue-faced Wildcat followers and "Rock Chalk"-chanting Jayhawks fans to fill the building. The only reason that price isn't higher is the nature of the tournament itself: For all the Kentucky and Kansas fans who bought finals tickets, there were Ohio State and Louisville faithful doing the same thing once their teams made the Final Four. Once those schools are eliminated, a whole lot of championship seats go on the market. There's demand for those tickets, but no real shortage of supply in a venue as large as New Orleans' Superdome.

World Series
2011 average ticket price of all games played in series: $567

The St. Louis Cardinals and Texas Rangers took this one to seven games in a fevered back-and-forth series that didn't leave either fan base despondent enough to dump tickets. In fact, attendance and demand only increased as the series went on. Even the rain that postponed Game 6 wasn't much of a deterrent, as Busch Stadium took in more fans than it did in either Game 1 or Game 2. Those faithful were rewarded for their investment with 11 innings and David Freese's solo home run to force Game 7.

NBA Finals
2011 average ticket price of all games played in series: $629

That average is mercurial at best, according to the folks at StubHub(EBAY) . During last year's Finals alone, average ticket prices ranged from $416 for Game 1 to $677 for Game 3. Still, the prices for last year's series between the Miami Heat and Dallas Mavericks were some of the lowest in recent years. Back in 2010 when the Boston Celtics played the Los Angeles Lakers in a rematch of the 2008 Finals, the average ticket price started at $674 for Game 1 and soared to $905 for Game 6 and a whopping $1,316 for Game 7. The latter was the highest resale average of the past three years. For the lowest, you'd have to go back to the Lakers' four-game sweep of the Orlando Magic in 2009. The series started out with an average $658 for Game 1 and $722 for Game 2, but cratered below $400 for the next two games as Dwight Howard and company lost steam.