Secondary Market Prices For Warriors' Home Games Highest In NBA; Road Resale Up 117%

Warriors fans are "paying the highest prices on the ticket-resale market to attend home games this year," according to Carl Bialik of FIVETHIRTYEIGHT.com. On the road, the Warriors "are vying with LeBron James’s Cavaliers and the Lakers’ Kobe Bryant retirement tour to be the league’s biggest box-office draw," which is a "big change from previous years." SeatGeek data shows the Warriors last season "ranked third in average ticket-resale prices both at home and on the road." Two seasons before that, a 47-win Warriors team "ranked near the middle of the league in box-office mojo, selling tickets at prices around one-third of what they’re getting this year." But while the Warriors’ "magnetism is obvious, the NBA’s ticket-price standings aren’t as clear-cut." Sales data for games this season through Sunday showed the Warriors’ average road game ticket resale price of $144 "trails the Cavs’ by $1 and the Lakers’ by $2." StubHub data indicates that this "includes sales for the rest of the season’s games," which shows the Warriors ($173) "trailing the Cavs by $9 but leading the Lakers by $17 in road-game ticket prices." Both data sets "show that the Warriors are comfortably in first place in average home ticket prices," and that the Warriors' box-office draw "is way up from a few years ago." Of the Warriors' 15 road games, four "have been against teams that rank in the bottom-five in home ticket prices on the resale market and eight have been against teams that rank in the bottom 11." Once adjusted for teams the Warriors have visited, they have had "by far the league’s biggest upward pull on road-game ticket-resale prices." Ticket resale prices for their road games are an average of 117% "higher than the average resale price in those arenas this season." The Cavs "are the next closest" at 102% (FIVETHIRTYEIGHT.com, 12/16).