"This is an unqualified box-office record," said Paul Dergarabedian, chairman of Exhibitor Relations, a company in Los Angeles that monitors ticket sales.
The National Agency of Civil Aviation said that it would begin an audit of Tam and monitor ticket sales by all airlines for the New Year's holiday to prevent overbooking.
The university fills its 87,000-seat stadium for most home games, and the average price of tickets resold online is $345 ,about 6 percent higher than at this time last year, according to FanSnap, which monitors ticket resale Web sites.
A small explosion and fire inside O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, the result of what was supposed to be routine electrical work, caused an afternoon power failure that shut security checkpoints, monitors, ticket counters, escalators, elevators and air-conditioning inside two terminals for several hours.
Buyers can also pay for "drop checkers", which automatically monitor ticketing sites for new events and pick up tickets automatically based on the users' preferences.
Asked about fears of low sales, he added: "We are monitoring the ticket sales.
The site also can monitor airline ticketing systems for openings of "Rewards seats", and can also suggest when it might not be a good idea to apply Frequent Flyer Miles towards a particular flight.
The tickets for Friday's game that are being offered for resale online have nearly doubled in price since Steinbrenner's death, according to FanSnap.com, which monitors StubHub and other ticket resellers.
According to FanSnap.com, a Web site that monitors nearly five dozen ticket resellers, the average price of a ticket being offered for sale to Sunday's play, which for now is the final round, had fallen by 40percentt.
A budget monitoring report revealed 95,000 tickets were issued in 2011/12 (excluding March), compared with 36,000 in 2010/11 and 26,753 in 09/10.
