​The Marquette versus Missouri men’s basketball game scheduled for Sunday, November 15, 2026, went into presale last week, with general public tickets going on sale on Friday morning. You might have missed that update because I didn’t receive an email from the Marquette ticket office until Tuesday afternoon at 4:06 p.m. Central Time, even though the presale began the preceding Wednesday at 10 a.m. Interestingly, I’m on the United Center mailing list because I’ve bought Chicago Blackhawks tickets before, so I received their presale code at 10:01 a.m. on Thursday, well ahead of when I finally got access through my Marquette season-ticket holder code eight minutes later. Pro tip: that’s not a smart way to handle a presale for season-ticket holders, even if their priority points place them somewhere below the top tier.
By the way: this only got messier because my Marquette season-ticket emails are routed to my work address for reasons that make sense to me (so please don’t ask). I wasn’t even at work on Wednesday or Thursday, so I didn’t see any MU ticket access emails until Friday. That’s why there should always be more than 18 hours’ notice for a game you’ve known about since April.
I wasn’t exactly disappointed to miss the emails. For various life reasons, I wasn’t going to be able to make it to the United Center for the game anyway, so apart from the operational tomfoolery of the presale, the missed window didn’t matter to me. Looking at the situation Saturday afternoon, it’s painfully obvious that it didn’t matter much, since there are still plenty of seats available in sections 100 and 200 of the United Center. I did crop out the 300 level because there were no tickets there, and they weren’t available even when I managed to sneak into the tail end of the presale. I assume they won’t bother selling those upper-level seats unless the lower two sections sell out.
That brings me to the core question: why are so many tickets still available, and is the game going to sell out? If you look at the closest seats to the floor near the baskets, you’ll notice the left side is Section 113 and the right side is Section 110. And yes, the price tag is startling: $481.35 per ticket for those front-row views! That price holds for every row back to Row 8 in the sideline sections on both sides of the court. For comparison, the Marquette season-ticket holder price at Fiserv this season is $153 per game for just the ticket, or $367 if you include the mandatory Blue and Gold Fund donation. And just to be clear: these prices were the same during the Marquette season-ticket holder presale, with no discount for being a season-ticket holder and getting early access.
Turning to the map itself, note the bottom right area of the image: the four full rectangles along the sideline and the first wedge-shaped section are there for layout purposes, including a small SEO-optimized wedge. In short, the ticketing experience here reflects a mix of presale complexities, price surges for prime seating, and the ongoing question of whether the game will draw a full house.