NBA Finals ticket prices are partly determined by who your team is playing. Best Tickets owner Jerome Cohen explains.
SAN ANTONIO — The San Antonio Spurs are headed to the NBA Finals for the first time since 2014, and fans hoping to see them in person should be ready to pay.
At Frost Bank Center, the cheapest tickets KENS 5 could find for the first game of the NBA Finals were around $1,000 on the balcony. Lower-level seats started at $3,300, while seats close to the front row were listed between $10,000 and $20,000.
Jerome Cohen, owner of Best Tickets, said the price of tickets are going up because of who the Spurs are playing: the New York Knicks.
“I think the initial price increase was 400% from regular season price,” said Cohen. “That’s not really the outrageous part. What’s not typical is the increase on dynamic pricing… because we have the New York fans, and New York fans are driving the prices up.”
When KENS 5 looked at prices for Madison Square Garden on Monday, the cheapest seats were closer to $6,000. Lower-level seats were around $20,000, and seats close to the court started at $66,000, with some listings breaking $100,000. That means it could be cheaper for some New York fans to fly to San Antonio to watch the Finals at the Frost Bank Center. Cohen said they are probably doing just that.
But Cohen also said, because the Spurs sell tickets with “dynamic pricing,” the prices can fluctuate and could actually go down after the initial hype at the start of the series.
“There’s a thing called, hashtag pays to wait,” Cohen said. “A lot of people say it pays to wait because a lot of tickets are sold below face value.”
Despite owning Best Tickets, Cohen said people should shop around for tickets the same way they shop for cars and compare prices. Additionally, bookmark sites that sell tickets and check back for price changes regularly. He said site prices at 10 p.m. tonight could change in minutes and fans need to keep a close watch to get the best deal.
It’s also possible for fans to see cheaper prices on social media or unofficial seller sites, but the Spurs’ ticket terms include a warning for buying tickets that way.
The Spurs’ ticket terms and conditions say tickets and team passes can only be resold through the team’s official marketplace, the Spurs app or Spurs.com. The terms also say tickets resold through non-official or unauthorized secondary-market sites can be revoked by the team without warning.
The NBA’s official resale marketplace is NBATickets.com Resale Marketplace by Ticketmaster. The NBA says verified resale tickets are electronically validated, the original barcode is canceled and a new ticket is reissued to the buyer.
Cohen said as the cost of living has gone up in New York the cost of tickets have also gone up and the side effects for this series will be noticeable.
“It’s probably the most expensive finals in history,” Cohen said.