Written by: Cole Bergman
With the NBA regular season coming to a close the playoffs are right around the corner. Each year eight teams from each of the two conferences are put into a bracket to compete for the Larry O'Brien Championship trophy. These teams are decided by the teams with the best records. Each matchup is decided by the first to win four games which causes the pressure for your team to win to increase. This causes the demand for merchandise and tickets to skyrocket. One problem that has come up is people are complaining that they cannot afford to go to playoff games because they are so expensive. I think ticket prices should not be decreased because of these fans. With this great demand the teams should be able to charge the highest price people will buy similar to price discrimination.
Consumers are willing to spend a lot more on tickets as they get to witness a game that could determine there team winning or losing. Along with that consumers are willing to spend more money on special merchandise that is playoffs themed as it is purchasable for only a limited amount of time.
Teams in bigger cities often take better advantage of this opportunity charging more for tickets than other smaller cities. One example of this is in last years playoffs in the first round the Houston Rockets tickets averaged a price of $225 compared to the much smaller city of Cleveland home to the cavaliers who averaged a ticket cost of $105 for their first round games of the playoffs.
Not only do the playoffs affect the purchase of tickets and merchandise. Similar to olympics, the economy of the city hosting the playoff game grows as more people come into the city from all around the country. People are roaming the streets, hotels fill up, and restaurants are packed. These teams also have more total games than the teams that didn't make the playoffs which causes them to get more publicity and more fans. The team that gets to four wins first wins which means there are no following games in that series. This means that there could only be four games or there could be up to seven games total. Relating to this Larry Coon states that the league would "love for every series to go seven games. Then it's raking in more advertising dollars." (The More)
Works Cited
“2018 NBA Playoffs Tickets.” SeatGeek, seatgeek.com/events/nba-playoffs.
Brown, Larry. “LeBron James' Block, Kyrie Irving's 3-Pointer Were the Plays of the Game.” Larry
Brown Sports, 20 June 2016, larrybrownsports.com/basketball/lebron-james-block-kyrie-irving-3-pointer-game-7/309239.
Marketplace.org. “The More Playoff Games NBA Stars Play, the Less Money They Make per Game.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 10 June 2016, www.businessinsider.com/the-more-playoff-games-nba-stars-play-the-less-money-they-make-per-game-2016-6.
I never really thought about the price of tickets being more expensive in larger cities so that's an interesting point. I think as ticket prices for NBA playoff games continue to rise all over, fans will still continue to purchase them regardless which only feeds into the extra money teams generate for making it into post season play. I'd be curious to know how much revenue is created for each additional playoff series that a team plays in.
ReplyDeleteI agree with kat, I never realized that the tickets were more expensive in bigger cities. I would want to know how much revenue is actually generated from ticket sales itself. Overall great work on the post:)
ReplyDeleteI feel that people would still pay for the tickets if they made it more expensive. It wouldn't be a smart of the business to make tickets cheaper especially since people are willing to pay for it so they wouldn't be able to maximize their profits if people are still willing to pay for the tickets. I never really thought of how much more money certain teams bring in just because of where they are located. They don't just receive money for fans coming to the games but when a team makes the playoffs or even the championship, the fans always get more and new apparel to support the team they love.
ReplyDeleteI agree I think price should not be lowered as there are enough people who are willing to buy tickets at a more expensive price to fill the entire stadium. NBA teams should continue to increase their prices to prices that customers will pay. This will give them more money to grow the franchise you are spporting in buying tickets.
DeleteI am curious on how this compares to other big sports in the United States like football or baseball since $913 seems very steep to watch a 2 hour basketball game. Even though it is steep, I think that fans jump on the opportunity to buy these tickets if their team is playing because they don't know if their team will make it to the championship game in the future so they want to be there in case they don't. Also it makes sense why the owner would want each of the series that;s played to go to seven games because then they make more profit and then put more money back into the economy by buying new boats, houses and other luxury items.
ReplyDeleteI think that NBA series are honestly too long. Having a 7 game series takes a lot of the championship meaning behind the title. I think that having a smaller or no series will bring even more excitement given the fact that people always hope for a game 7 and that brings in the most money. With a shorter series the games have more meaning because they can't just afford to play bad and make it up in the next one to even the score. The demand for the big game 7 is what really brings in the big bucks and by cutting things h=short they don't pose out on money they could have made if there was a 4 game sweep.
ReplyDeleteI would agree with Cam when he says the series are too long. I am sure that this has a negative effect on the amount of money that the NBA could be pumping into the economy if they didn't lose the interest of some viewers. I would also like to see the how much more teams make as they advance compared to the amount that certain teams make that end up losing in the first round.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about you but I love the NBA playoffs. I don't think they are too long, I love watching Lebron James every single year, and will gladly contribute to the revenue of the NBA. Just this year I went to game six of the Bucks vs Celtics series. It was incredible to watch. Maybe you need to be in the building to get into they hype of it all, but it was definitely worth it.
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