Chase Center ticket prices keep climbing
Resale ticket prices for the NBA Finals beginning Thursday at Chase Center were averaging $3,526 per seat, higher than any of the team’s five previous appearances in the Finals at Oracle Arena in Oakland, according to information supplied by Ticket IQ, a secondary marketplace for tickets.
Ticket prices at Chase Center averaged nearly $1,000 per ticket more than the prices in Boston, where Games 3 and 4 will be played. The Chase Center resale average was second only to tickets for games played in Toronto between the Warriors and Raptors in the 2019 Finals. Those prices averaged $4,364 per seat while the games in Oakland averaged $3,445 per seat.
Jesse Lawrence, founder and president of Ticket IQ, said if the Finals return from Boston for Game 5 in San Francisco, prices will go higher than for Game 1. If it goes all the way to Game 7, also in San Francisco, they could approach the record set by the Raptors, at home in Toronto in 2019.
“This is the first playoff run at Chase Center, so that is a factor,” said Lawrence. “The first time in a new venue always brings a premium.”
All games are sold out and as it stands now, the cheapest resale ticket offered at Ticket IQ for Thursday is $697 for a seat four rows from the top. For Game 5, the cheapest ticket available is $1,057 for a seat two rows closer to the floor. The most expensive ticket offered for resale for Game 1 asked $27,266 for each of four seats directly behind the Warriors’ bench.
Assuming there will be a Game 5 in San Francisco, those same four seats for Game 5 rise to $31,155 apiece. The highest asking price for Game 5 on Ticket IQ is $48,595 per ticket, and if there is a Game 7 in San Francisco, the highest asking price rises to $81,533 per seat.
On StubHub, prices were slightly lower, with the cheapest seats offered for Thursday’s game priced at $599 each, with just two tickets remaining in that category. The highest price on StubHub for Thursday’s game is $12,163.
At Ticketmaster the seats started at $550 for the upper deck and $876 for the lower level. Tickets in the front row of the courtside VIP section are listed for $30,000 each and drop to $23,500 for the second row.
Lawrence said he is not surprised that tickets to games in San Francisco are dramatically more expensive than tickets to games in Boston, which has a longer and more illustrious history in the NBA Finals than do the Warriors. This is Boston’s first trip to the championship series since 2010 when the Celtics lost to the Lakers in seven games.
“Warriors fans have more disposable income and are used to paying higher prices than Celtics fans,” he said.