“SeatGeek.com (http://seatgeek.com) forecasts how sports and concert ticket prices move on the secondary ticket market.”
Max, from SeatGeek.com was kind enough to give me a few interesting stats about ticket prices in this series. Here’s what he sent me:
- This series, Blackhawks tickets are selling on average for $759.38 and Flyers for $572.00.
- The most expensive games in these series are in Chicago. Game 7 is $921.23 and Game 5 is $829.99.
- The first Flyers game was the cheapest in the series and transacted at only $528.12, which is about 7.7% less than the average Flyers ticket price this series.
- The average price for the series is $656.19.
- Our data is showing that the NHL Finals are a bigger draw on the resale market than the NBA Finals. This is shocking considering that Lakers / Celtics is the biggest NBA rivalry and Kobe is the biggest NBA star. Yet, Blackhawks tickets are selling at $759.38 and Lakers tickets are “only” transacting at $684.42. Since the Blackhawks lack any superstars, the NHL is demonstrating that you don’t need star-studded teams to woo fans.
First off, it’s incredible that people are able to afford these ridiculous prices. Exactly what is this recession thing that keeps getting mentioned on the news? Now before Blackhawk’s fans get high and mighty about their resale values being higher, let’s look at it two ways. First, the price is not an indication of either city’s fanhood. Instead, it indicates how much better Chicago’s economy must be than Philly’s. Their stadium is bigger, thus the market is probably flooded with more supply. More supply usually means lower prices, but that’s the the trend in this case. Chicago is also the bigger city, and thus has more overall demand there. So even though there’s more tickets to go around, there’s a lot more people that want the tickets, and so they are willing to pay top dollar. The other way to look at it is that Philly fans are a bit more savvy. They know how to haggle and bargain a better and drive the price down. Either way you wanna look at it, the fact that these are “average” numbers is insane. I know plenty of people that paid approx. $300/ticket, so to balance it out, there must be people paying well over a $1,000. And you know what, if I could, I would. This is a special, special thing that doesn’t come around very often. I wish I could see it in person. For any “fans” that sold their tickets to make a few bucks: YOU”RE NOT A REAL FAN. If you actually cared about your team, and you had face value tickets, you’d go see them unless some sort of emergency comes up. Real fans should never, ever re-sell their tickets just to make a quick buck.
Also, about the last bullet point that Max provided, about the NHL vs NBA resale value. It’s not just about the team vs. superstars generating ticket sales. It’s about hockey being way, way better than basketball. Of course I’m hockey-biased, but I still like other sports. I respect NBA player’s athletic abilities, but I have very, very little respect for their sports. A little slap on the wrist is a foul. You can’t stand in certain parts of the court for too long. Dropping an f-bomb at the ref gets you a technical. But what get’s me more than anything, is when someone drives the ball, and purposely jumps into a defender, and the defender gets called. What the hell kind of logic is that. Can you imagine that in hockey? Imagine if Mike Richards dives head first at Duncan Keith’s stick, and Keith gets called for slashing. And the other thing that gets me is the final minutes of a close game when both teams have a few timeouts. Two minutes easily drag on to last an hour. BORING! Are these athletes so dumb that the coach must call timeout after every freaking play to go over strategy? Give them some instructions, and let them freaking play! These are the reasons that hockey is a real man’s sport, and basketball is for dumb-asses. And it’s also the reason why hockey is more watchable, and tickets are selling for more!
Thanks for reading!
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