a blurb from the comicle on reselling:
Finals ticket prices: The profit in reselling tickets to games 1 and 2 of the NBA Finals in Oakland were way down this year compared with the same matchup — Golden State Warriors vs. Cleveland Cavaliers — last year.
The Warriors charged more for playoff tickets this year, while prices paid on the resale market were down, according to online ticket marketplaces.
Games 1 and 2 were played in Oakland Thursday and Sunday. Games 3 and 4 move to Cleveland Wednesday and Friday.
On StubHub, the median price paid for Game 1 at Oracle Arena was $637 this year versus $908 last year, a 30 percent drop. The median price for Game 2 was $790 versus $917 last year, down 14 percent.
“I think it’s entirely due to the fact that it’s the second year in a row the Warriors have made the Finals. That’s not to say there still isn’t demand, there clearly is. But whenever a team goes through a long drought without a Finals appearance then makes it, fans often flood the market and will pay almost anything to get in. That’s what happened last year,” StubHub spokesman Cameron Papp said in an email. Before last year, the Warriors had not been in the Finals since 1975.
Other marketplaces, which calculate average prices, also saw a drop. The average is calculated by adding up all the prices paid and dividing the the number of tickets sold. It can be skewed upward by a few very expensive tickets.
SeatGeek reported that average ticket prices were $1,026 for Game 1 this year vs. $1,306 last year, a 21 percent drop. For Game 2, the average resale price was $1,161 versus 1,377 last year, down 16 percent.
Rukkus, another online marketplace, said that average prices for Game 1 dropped to $1,329 this year from $1,479 last year. For Game 2, they rose slightly to $1,576 from $1,502.
Historically speaking, these prices are still astronomical. Rukkus notes that last year’s ticket prices were nearly double what they had been for the prior three finals, and Warriors tickets were selling for almost 20 percent more than Cavaliers tickets. “This year that margin is even larger with Warriors Game 1 tickets selling for 51 percent more than Game 3 in Cleveland, and Game 2 selling for 46 percent more than Game 4,” said Jake Adelman, Rukkus‘ digital marketing manager.
A group of season ticket holders I wrote about last week, who paid $1,000 for each of their seats, for games 1 and 2 and resold them, got only $750 net of fees for Game 1 and $950 for Game 2.
“So we lost $600 on two games of the NBA Finals,” said Steve Itelson, one of the ticket partners. “I saw there were still over 300 seats available on the Warriors website at 4 p.m. Sunday, one hour before the game started, including some in our section.”
One of the group’s partners will attend Game 5, if there is one. If there is a Game 7, the group plans to sell tickets and, with luck, will end up with an overall profit for the finals.
For the entire playoff series to date, “We ended up plus $8 per partner because the last game against Oklahoma City sold well above $380 face price,” Itelson said.
