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January 25, 2011
Cavaliers at Nets? Priceless (Almost)
The New York Times
by Benjamin Hoffman
For slightly less than the $2.50 cost of a single-ride MetroCard, a basketball fan could have treated himself and 21 of his friends to an N.B.A. game Monday night in Newark.
Early in the day, SlamOnline reported that tickets for the game between the Nets and the Cleveland Cavaliers were selling for as little as 25 cents each on the online ticket seller StubHub.com. That seemed to set off a bit of a price war, with many tickets falling below that price. By the time the site shut down ticket sales, the least expensive seats available were listed at just 11 cents for the game between the two worst teams in the Eastern Conference.
With 22 tickets available at that price, the total to buy them would have been $2.42, though service and delivery fees would have increased the total purchase to a whopping $12.37. A single fan traveling from New York City would spend almost that much just getting to the game and back; transportation from Manhattan to the Prudential Center via New Jersey Transit costs $5 each way.
NoLandGrab: And why, you might ask yourself, are New York's taxpayers kicking in more than a billion dollars to land a team for which the market demand is 11ยข a ticket?
Posted by eric at January 25, 2011 4:19 PM