Louisville-Cincinnati tickets have tripled

Louisville fans, do you have your tickets to Saturday's Louisville-Cincinnati game? If not, good luck. It's the hottest ticket in Cincinnati in years and could be the most expensive ticket of the AAC season.

"At an average ticket price of $149, Saturday's game is more than twice as expensive as any other Bearcats home game since we began monitoring the secondary market in 2009," SeatGeek.com rep Connor Gregoire said. "The next-most in-demand game was the Jan. 5, 2011 game against Xavier, which drew an average ticket price of $69."

No. 5/11 Louisville is the highest ranked team in he American Athletic Conference, but No. 9/7 Cincinnati leads the league standings at 13-1 in AAC play and 24-3 overall. If the Bearcats beat Louisville Saturday at noon, they are a shoo-in to win the regular-season league title. Tickets in the upper level have quadrupled in price as the game approaches.

"Prior to selling out, face value tickets from the Cincinnati box office for seats in the back of the upper level were sold for $20; now, the cheapest available ticket on the secondary market is listed at $84," Gregoire said. "Seats in the front of the upper level originally sold for $55 at face value and are now listed at $178 and up, and lower-level seats with a face value of $150 are available starting at $250."

There are still tickets available through SeatGeek.com and other sources, but supplies are limited. Click here to track ticket prices for Saturday's game

"As of this morning, there are only about 120 tickets available on the secondary market for tomorrow's game, down from a peak of about 700 tickets three weeks ago," Gregoire said. "Those 120 or so seats represent less than 1 percent of capacity at Fifth Third Arena."

Louisville's football game at Cincinnati was a hot ticket earlier this season, but it pales in comparison to demand for this game.

"Interestingly enough, the average ticket price for Saturday's game is twice that of the most in-demand Bearcats football game of the last five years," Gregoire said. "The highest average we've recorded for a game at Nippert Stadium is $74 for Cincinnati-Virginia Tech on Sept. 29, 2012."

Adding interest to Saturday's game is the fact that Louisville and Cincinnati may not play each other in future years. Louisville will head off to the ACC and Cincinnati is staying in the AAC, and the schools have not agreed to a series going forward. All these factors have combined to make Saturday's ticket the highest priced ticket in the AAC this season according to SeatGeek, the top online resource for tracking ticket prices.

"Tickets for Louisville at Connecticut back on Jan. 18 were nearly as expensive, but not quite, with the average seat going for $143," Gregoire said. "When the Bearcats knocked off the Cardinals in Louisville on Jan. 30, fans paid an average of $76 for a ticket -- nearly half of what tickets for Saturday's game are going for on the resale market."