The Secondary Market for NBA All-Star Weekend Is Obscene

NBA All-Star festivities are going down in New York City this upcoming weekend, which meant as a default that things would be super pricy. I inherently realized that, but will be (unrelatedly) traveling to that neck of the woods, and checked StubHub to see if going to the Saturday night contests at the Barclays Center or the All-Star game at Madison Square Garden were in any way feasible. They’re not.

For Saturday night’s 3-Point and Dunk contests, the get-in price is $449.99, and it’s an astonishing $775 for the All-Star game on Sunday. That’s insane! These are for seats high up in the corners — the worst vantage in the arenas. In December, Forbes cited ticket reseller TiqIQ as saying that average secondary market prices ($3,255.99) for Sunday are the highest they’ve been in five years, and more than three times that of last year in New Orleans.

Unless you’re a hedge fund titan, these numbers aren’t worth it for a game that features no defense. It’s been well over a decade since the game was even mandatory television viewing. There’ll be some eye-popping dunks and stuff, but you’d presumably also catch those in Saturday morning’s practice at MSG where you can get in for about 40 bucks.