The NBA All-Star Weekend has "increasingly expanded into what is now a five-day happening," but the "best-known parts of the event are largely restricted," according to Zach Schonbrun of the N.Y. TIMES. What was once "a single afternoon exhibition" is now "flush with fan festivals, open practices, a celebrity game, caravans to local schools and Manhattan fashion parties for the American sport most closely identified with personal style." But the NBA has "created something of a closed-access party." Tickets for Sunday's All-Star Game at MSG, Saturday's Sprite Slam Dunk Contest at Barclays Center and other competitions "were not made available for public sale for the fifth straight year." Two-thirds of the available seating (or more than 10,000 tickets) for the events Saturday night and Sunday "were claimed by the league to distribute to its long list of broadcast and marketing partners, other affiliates, players, the players’ association and NBA alumni." In addition, close to 20% of the seats in both arenas "were claimed to accommodate production and staging needs for the TV broadcasts and to make room for a large news media contingent." The rest of the tickets "were divided among the 30 NBA teams to be distributed to fans and others, with the Knicks and the Nets getting special dispensation." MLB "sees fit to claim only about a third" of its All-Star tickets," while the NFL "claimed just" 25.2% of tickets for Super Bowl XLIX. The NHL requires that about 40% of tickets to its All-Star Game "be delegated for league purposes." NBA fans "can still buy tickets for Saturday and Sunday night from secondary-sale sites like StubHub," but those prices "have soared, averaging close to $2,000 per ticket on Thursday, a lot more than face value" (N.Y. TIMES, 2/13).
DUNK CITY: Nets investor Bruce Ratner was a guest on CNBC’s "Squawk Box" on Friday morning, and host Andrew Ross Sorkin asked which All-Star Weekend event is "the event that people want more?" Ratner: “I like Saturday night better, not only because it’s with us (at Barclays Center), but because it’s kind of more fun. The game hopefully will be wonderful and I'm sure it will be wonderful, but I probably would have preferred the Slam Dunk (Contest).” Sorkin asked if All-Star Weekend is a “big money making weekend” for the Nets, to which Ratner replied, “No. Actually by the time you put it together, you lose everything -- you make a little bit of money, but not a big amount of money. You do a lot of things because they’re fun to do, they're enjoyable, they're great for the city, they're great for the NBA. That's what this is about" (
“Squawk Box, CNBC, 2/13).
