"Lin"sanity Proved To Be A Huge Financial Draw
MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Fans who didn't have their tickets to the New York Knicks versus Miami Heat game before "Lin"sanity hit, paid the price. Some tickets cost thousands of dollars.
According to TiqIq.com, a ticket information company that tracks online ticket prices, the game Thursday night was 15 percent more expensive than last year's Game 2 of the NBA Finals.
In addition, TiqIq.com found the average price of Thursday's game is $712.61, which is nearly $500 more than the average ticket for a Heat game. Plus, the game's price has jumped 233.9 percent since Jeremy Lin's first game.
It turns out timing was everything. Paul and Mireille Mikhail are visiting Miami from Canada. They bought their tickets before Jeremy Lin gained a following.
"Before Linsanity," Paul Mikhail explained, "the same tickets were about $750 last time we checked. Sure enough, fans sitting next to them said they paid $820 per ticket.
A quick look at stubhub.com showed that even standing room only tickets were priced at a minimum of $125 a piece.
If you wanted to sit on the sideline and go through stubhub, tickets ranged in price from $5,295 a piece on courtside west to $10,000 on courtside north.
According to the website agreatplacetosit.com, tickets in the upper level 400 section were going for a minimum of $200 while lower level seats are going for between $400 and $500 per seat.
The website also listed courtside seats at $5,000.
Fans sitting courtside likely spotted some famous faces including Spike Lee and Lil Wayne. Just a few rows back, Mike Russ and his son Tripp celebrated Tripp's 18th birthday. They said $1,000 a ticket was "reasonable."
Obviously those are not the face value of the tickets, but it's what ticket prices have come to in the world of Jeremy "Lin"sanity.
If you aren't familiar with Linsanity, then you haven't followed the NBA or ESPN lately. Lin is the point guard for the New York Knicks who breathed life into a franchise that was getting ready to collapse just a few short weeks ago.
Since then, Lin has played extremely well, the media has crowned him the next big thing, and the Knicks are the lead sports story on ESPN every night.
