All week, news stories have marveled at what seems impossible: Something is twice as expensive in Sacramento as in San Francisco. A slew of stories attributed it to pent-up hype in the Kings fanbase, which hasn’t seen a playoff game since 2006, and the fact that the two cities are separated by fewer than a hundred miles apart.
That didn’t seem right to me: Surely it had to be a question of supply and demand. Maybe one team made fewer tickets available on the open market, thereby jacking up prices.
As it turns out, data provided to SFGATE by ticket reseller Stubhub answered the question once and for all. It really is pumped-up Kings fans. There are more tickets available for Games 3 and 4 at the Chase Center, but the difference isn’t enough to explain the whopping disparity in prices, a Stubhub representative explained. (Warriors director of communications Raymond Ridder told SFGATE that all single-game playoff tickets at Chase were sold out on the primary market.)
As of Friday morning, according to Stubhub data, there were about 2,000 remaining resale tickets for Game 1 in Sacramento, with an average price of $600. Compare that to Game 3 in San Francisco, which had about 2,600 tickets available at an average price of $272.
For the other games in the series, there are actually more tickets available in Sacramento, and they’re still going for a higher price. There are 2,739 tickets on the market for Monday night’s Game 2, the most of any game in the series, and the average ticket price is $459. That’s far more expensive than even the most expensive Chase Center game on the slate. Tickets for Game 4, scheduled for Sunday, April 23 in San Francisco, are averaging $282 with more than 2,500 available, according to Stubhub.
A spokesperson for the ticket reselling giant attributed the prices to hungry Kings fans and said he expected the trend to flatten out in a longer series.
“The Kings making the playoffs for the first time in 17 years is driving big demand, as we see reflected in the prices fans are willing to pay for games in Sacramento,” Stubhub’s Adam Budelli said in a statement. “Saturday’s game … currently accounts for almost half the tickets sold on StubHub for the series so far, but we expect to see sales even out once the NBA releases the full series schedule.”
Game 1 tips at 5:30 p.m. in Sacramento and will air on ABC.
