Wolfpack fans scramble for game and airline tickets after team vaults to Final Four

Ben Watts and his father, Charles, began talking about it the opening weekend of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament last month.

Charles Watts was teaching accounting at N.C. State University the last time the men’s team went to the national finals and surprised everyone with a championship. He chose not to go.

So after the team’s improbable run through this year’s ACC tournament and their upset of Texas Tech, father and son started musing. What if the Pack made it to the finals again after 41 years? Would they go to Phoenix?

“We kind of jokingly floated it out there, fingers crossed, breath held, that it would actually happen,” Ben Watts said. So when N.C. State beat Duke on Sunday to earn a trip to the Final Four, Watts said, “We got on the phone almost immediately and said, ‘Let’s do this.’”

And so it went in homes and bars and on text and online chats throughout North Carolina. While fans of No. 1 seeds Purdue or the University of Connecticut confidently booked hotel rooms and flights to Phoenix well in advance, most Wolfpack fans sweated through two more upset wins over the weekend before joining the scramble for game and airline tickets and a place to stay in Arizona.

Meanwhile, the Wolfpack women’s trip to the Final Four in Cleveland, while less surprising, comes with challenges of its own. Those looking for last-minute flights or a hotel room in northern Ohio are competing with crowds coming to see Monday’s total solar eclipse, which passes right over Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse where the finals will be played the night before.

Ben Watts said he found plenty of tickets for the men’s tournament on StubHub, ranging from hundreds to as much as $11,000 for the three games in State Farm Stadium. He bought two in the lower bowl for $900 apiece.

“Since it’s a football stadium, we didn’t want to be up in the nosebleeds and not see anything,” said Watts, the business operations and sales director for Cape Fear Catamarans in Wilmington. “I think some of those were available for like $600.”

As for airline tickets, Watts said they considered saving a little money and flying to Tucson and driving two hours. They opted instead for the convenience of a nonstop from Raleigh-Durham International Airport to Phoenix on Delta Air Lines.

Delta doesn’t normally fly nonstop between RDU and Phoenix. To take advantage of the heightened demand, the airline adds flights to coincide with big events such as the Super Bowl, the Masters golf tournament and next weekend’s eclipse, said spokesman Drake Castaneda.

For the Final Four, Delta created two nonstops from RDU to Phoenix on Friday and two returning flights four days later. By Monday evening, the few remaining main cabin tickets were priced at more than $2,000 apiece round trip. By Tuesday afternoon, the flights were sold out.

While many fans scoured ticket, airline and hotel websites to cobble together their trips, the N.C. State Wolfpack Club worked with a vendor to create travel packages for fans. Options varied, but some packages included everything — flights, tickets, hotels, ground transportation and special fan events. Starting prices for these “land and air packages” were listed at $3,940 and $4,305 on Monday; by Tuesday, they were sold out.

Some find hotel and flight costs ‘astronomical’

With prices like those, not everyone could fulfill their dreams of seeing the Final Four in person.

Kevin Tyndall of Wendell had planned to go camping with friends in Virginia this weekend, but with the team celebrating its win over Duke on Sunday he had a change of heart.

“I am red and white through and through,” said Tyndall, who does sales for SweetWater Brewing Co. “And I looked at my wife and I said, ‘Is there any way you think we can make it out there?’”

So Tyndall and his wife, Shannan, started making plans. They bought two tournament tickets for about $900 each. With the cost of flights to Arizona rising, they decided to try Las Vegas and drive the four hours to Phoenix.

By midday Tuesday, the couple had given up.

“The game ticket prices when I bought them Sunday night, while expensive, weren’t all that bad for this type of event,” Tyndall wrote in a text message. “The flights and hotels are astronomical. I was thinking Sunday we’d be able to make the entire trip for $5k or so. It’ll easily be $8k, and that’s flying into Vegas, not Phoenix.”

Tyndall reposted the tickets on StubHub, where he said the prices had “gone up significantly” Wednesday. He’s not worried about finding a buyer and expects to get more than he paid for them.

Tucker King of Raleigh was set on going to Phoenix, too. King, NCSU class of 2006, was born three days before the 1983 championship game. How many more chances would he get?

Then on Monday morning he started looking at the airfare ($1,200 to $1,300) and ticket prices ($800 to $1,200 for a decent seat). He changed his mind before even looking for a hotel room.

“It added up really quickly, more so than I had imagined,” said King, who works as an estimator for Baker Roofing Co.

Now he expects to watch the game with a crowd in Raleigh somewhere Saturday night and spend some of the money he saved by not going in person.

“I’m sure there will be some sort of watch party where I’ll get an extra dessert or two,” he said. “I’ve got all this unspent money in my pocket.”

Advice from a UNC alum who has been there

Even before Sunday’s game against Duke got underway, Ross Martin was warning his friends from N.C. State not to hesitate about booking travel if they had any hope of going to Phoenix.

Martin knows from experience: For several years he covered the UNC men’s basketball team for Inside Carolina and went to three Final Fours. On a group chat, he told about a dozen Wolfpack fans that competition for airline tickets would become fierce as soon as it was clear the team was going.

“It’s a big fan base; they graduate tons of people that love N.C. State sports,” said Martin, who now edits college stories for 247 Sports. “So there’s this extreme desire to be there when it happens.”

In addition to speed, Martin said, making arrangements takes creativity and money.

“It’s a very expensive opportunity,” he said. “But it may not happen for another 30 years.”

Martin says he knows of several UNC fans who booked refundable airline tickets to Phoenix weeks ago, when it looked like a Tar Heel trip to the Final Four was a good bet.

That’s what Bruce Hill of Raleigh did. A big UNC fan, Hill bought an airline ticket from RDU to Phoenix using miles on American Airlines back in March, on the hope the Tar Heels would be playing.

He saw them play in the tournament in 2016 and 2017 and knows how hard it can be to get there. For the 2016 Final Four in Houston, Hill recalls flying through tiny airports in Beaumont, Texas, and Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Now he has a non-transferable airline ticket that Wolfpack fans would envy, as well as an Airbnb reservation. But as of Tuesday, he wasn’t sure if he would use them. He grew up in New Bern and saw games in Reynolds Coliseum as a kid, he said, so there’s a “small fondness for the Pack, but I’m not a diehard supporter.”

On the other hand, there’s the team’s storybook run these few weeks, plus the chance to see the Pack’s 275-pound center DJ Burns Jr. square off against Purdue’s 7-foot-4 Zach Edey.

“I’m still up in the air,” he said.