The ticket to watch the Cleveland Cavaliers raise the championship banner and get their rings next Tuesday has turned into a surprising value over the past couple of weeks.
With the town anticipating that the Cleveland Indians, up 3 games to 1 on the Toronto Blue Jays in the AL Championship Series, will be playing in the first game of the World Series at Progressive Field that night, prices for the Cavs' opener against the New York Knicks have fallen on the resale market.
Center court lower-level seats, which were selling for $5,000 in August, are now selling for $1,500 and below. Lower-level corner seats, which cost $700 on the resale market two months ago, are now down to $350. Getting into Quicken Loans Arena now only costs $150, down from $300 last month.
"People who have season tickets for the Cavaliers and the Indians are going to sell their Cavs tickets for this night, if they haven't already," said Mark Klang, owner of Cleveland-based ticket brokerage Amazing Tickets. "That means there are going to be more tickets than we anticipated on the open market for the Cavs game, so supply will go up."
Klang said he anticipates that there now will be some fans who never dreamed of being able to get into the arena to celebrate the Cavaliers' first title who will be sitting in seats come Tuesday night. There will be others who had the date circled on their calendar who might just stay home so that they can catch both games on television.
Not only have prices on the resale market dropped for the Cavaliers game, but there have been fewer sales in recent days as the Cleveland area anticipates the Indians clinching a spot in their first World Series since 1997.
The median price paid for the Cavaliers game on StubHub so far is $322 -- hundreds of dollars below what brokers thought that number would be.
Prior to the Cavaliers' title, Cleveland had the longest championship drought of any professional team city with at least three teams. The Cavaliers' championship was Cleveland's first since the Browns won it all in 1964.
