Cheapest NBA Finals Game 1 Ticket Climbs To Over $800 As Inventory Dwindles
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) - People who have been waiting until the last minute to snap up a ticket to Game 1 of the NBA Finals won't be getting the bargain they had hoped for.
The vast majority of seats to the first Bay Area Finals game in 40 years are offered on the secondary market for upwards of $1,000 as of Thursday afternoon. The least expensive seats opened around $650 per ticket when the team released its limited allotment last week, but prices have since climbed above $800 just to get in the door for Game 1. As of Thursday afternoon, the cheapest chair at Oarcle was $815 on Ticketmaster, the team's official resale partner.
As recently as Tuesday, there were more than 1,200 seats available for the game on Ticketmaster alone. That number has shrunk to 425 on Ticketmaster, with fewer than 325 available on the popular StubHub resale site.
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StubHub spokesman Cameron Papp said even at 1,200, the inventory for such a big game was very low, creating scarcity and higher prices for the seats. Often big games with larger inventories will see ticket prices drop just before the game, but that doesn't appear to be happening Thursday.
The Warriors have been encouraging fans to buy only though Ticketmaster - their official reseller - to avoid potential scams that you could run into buying from a scalper. StubHub, a San Francisco firm widley used by Giants fans and across all major American sports leagues, has sued the team claiming the Ticetmaster arrangement with the Warriors amounts to a monopoly.
Both operations have seen seats to Game 1 offered for tens of thousands of dollars in the prime locations. With the highest seats listed Thursday at more than $30,000 each. Earlier this week there were seats offered for more than $80,000, but it's not clear that those actually sold.
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Even at the elevated prices, some members of Dub Nation won't even think about parting with their seats.
"Everybody's been like, 'oh, how much can you make for it? How much can you sell it for?' I'm like, 'I've waited too long for this, there's no way we're going to sell it,'" season ticket holder Daniel Katz told KPIX 5.
