DENVER — Crews were out dressing up Ball Arena with huge NBA Finals banners on Tuesday, 48 hours before the Nuggets are set to tip-off against the Miami Heat in their first ever NBA Finals Thursday night.
“This will be a good boost,” said Dr. Kishore Kulkarni, distinguished professor of economics at Metropolitan State University of Denver.
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Kulkarni said the economic impact will be huge in the short-term for the Mile High City.
“I just looked at some studies done on Golden State and the San Francisco area,” Kulkarni said. “This is in the tens of millions – probably $20-$30 million just for that week.”
Ticket sales on secondary sites like Vivid Seats have upper level seats going for about $550 on the very low end, which is about $690 after service fees and sales tax.
On the high end, tickets are going for $9,700 courtside, which is $12,000 after service fees, some of the highest prices ever for the NBA Finals.
“It’s been decades of some hope, a lot of misery,” said lifelong Nuggets fan Lance Moorman. “Something we always kind of dreamed of.”
Because of that, fans like Moorman are willing to pay whatever it takes to go to the Finals.
“I had a discussion with my wife, and she was asking how much they are and I was like, ‘Don’t worry sweetheart, I’ve been saving my pennies subliminally for years for this.’ It’s well-worth it to me because it’s been a long time coming and you don’t really know when it will come again,” Moorman said. “You just kind of bite the bullet on this one and pony up the dough.”
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A new law in Colorado that is awaiting the governor’s signature could prohibit sites like Vivid Seats and StubHub from advertising ticket prices without disclosing the total cost, including service charges and other fees.
Lawmakers told Denver7 sites like StubHub are not happy with the legislation.
“No, they’re not,” said Sen. Mark Baisley, R–Douglas County, who co-sponsored the bipartisan legislation with a Democratic lawmaker. “And they’re not happy that it ended up the way it did. They flew people into Colorado to come and talk to us about this.”
The law also prohibits secondary sites from selling tickets before having them in their possession.
“The basic premise is – you can’t sell a ticket you don’t own,” said Sen. Robert Rodriguez, D–Denver.
As of now, tickets are selling for a premium.
“The market is what it is,” Rodriguez said. “This bill doesn’t tell you you can’t sell a ticket if you want to, if you get one.”
“Given our fan base, I’m not surprised that they are charging so much higher because there is a huge demand for it,” Kulkarni said.
According to TicketIQ, the average price is $2,300 a ticket, which is 4th highest in NBA Finals history.
