Going to men’s March Madness games could be very cheap or very pricey — depending on where you’re taking in the action.

Heading into the start of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament on Thursday, single-session tickets for first-round games were $7 or less on ticket marketplace TicketSmarter, according to USA Today, at four venues:

• Greensboro, North Carolina
• Des Moines, Iowa
• Orlando, Florida
• Sacramento, California

Greensboro’s first session — featuring Xavier, Kennesaw State, Iowa State, and Pittsburgh — is the lowest of the bunch, checking in at just $6 ($7 with fees) to get in.

On the flip side, several venues are seeing huge spikes in prices.

Albany, New York’s first session on Friday night led the way at $152, while Birmingham, Alabama, and Denver, Colorado, each had two entries in the top five.

Birmingham’s elevated prices make sense given the presences of top-overall seed Alabama and 4-seed Auburn — but interestingly, the Tigers’ session ($133) was outpacing the Crimson Tide’s ($99).

For fans looking ahead to the Final Four in Houston, those tickets will cost a bit more.

Data provided to Front Office Sports from ticket marketplace Gametime has the median ticket price for the national semifinals at $619, while the median price for the national championship game is “only” $427.

To get in, ticket prices start at $255 for the semifinals, $193 for the finals, and $335 for both sessions.

FIFA has upped the ante for its 2023 Women’s World Cup — but it still has a long way to go to achieve equal pay to the men’s game.

During his closing remarks at the governing body’s annual congress in Kigali, Rwanda, FIFA president Gianni Infantino — who was reelected after running unopposed — announced the prize money pool for the upcoming Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand would be $150 million.

Infantino emphasized that that figure is 10 times what it was in 2015 and three times that of 2019.

Still, it’s significantly less than the $440 million awarded to the men’s confederations for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

Perhaps anticipating backlash, Infantino called on broadcasters and sponsors of the women’s tournament “to do more.”

“FIFA is receiving between 10 and 100 times less from public broadcasters for the Women’s World Cup than the Men’s World Cup,” Infantino said. “Do you think that is normal?”

Saudi Sponsor Out

At the congress, Infantino confirmed a report from earlier in March that the tournament was planning to drop Saudi Arabia’s tourism board as a sponsor.

However, the FIFA president did not rule out having Visit Saudi as a partner for women’s tournaments going forward.

“FIFA is an organization made up of 211 countries,” said Infantino. “There is nothing wrong with taking sponsorships from Saudi Arabia, China, United States of America, Brazil, or India.”

Office pools are a March Madness tradition in many workplaces, but the hours spent filling out brackets take a sizable chunk out of the workday, according to one firm’s analysis.

U.S. employers lose $17.3 billion in productivity, per estimates by Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

The firm arrived at that figure using a 2018 survey from Quickbooks, which found that March Madness research and watching soaks up 25.5 minutes per workday for those who participate, and that 48% of U.S. workers spend on-the-clock hours on brackets and other March Madness activities.

Multiplied over 16 workdays across the tournament and an average hourly wage of $33.09, the firm arrived at $17.3 billion, up $1 billion from last year due to an addition of 2.7 million people to the American labor force.

The tournament, of course, is an economic engine as well. 

Television rights held by CBS and TBS bring in $771 million annually on a 14-year deal signed in 2010. That accounted for the bulk of the $1.1 billion the NCAA made last year on the tournament, with sources like ticket sales and corporate sponsorships added in.

In 2016, the NCAA agreed to an eight-year extension with CBS and TBS that will run up to 2032 at an annual rate of $1.1 billion.