Hours away from the Miami Heat’s history-making home opener with LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade, the game is not sold out. Yet.
Perhaps because so many fans assumed it would be sold out or that prices would be sky high, there remain several hundred tickets available at face value, according to the Heat front office. And NBC Miami has learned that several hundred more will become available Friday at noon, blocks of tickets released from the Heat, the Magic and the NBA.
Because there remain tickets available at face value, some fans who have tickets are having a hard time selling them.
"We bought them for $167 through Ticketmaster,” said Pam Miller. “And people only want to pay us $50 for the ticket. I'd like to sell them for $125. I'd take a loss but nobody wants to buy them."
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She and husband Bill Picchiarini throw an annual Halloween party at their Pompano Beach home. But Pam bought tickets only to realize it was the same night as their party – with invitations already in the mail.
"I was upset because I knew that - I mean, we both wanted to go to the game but he desperately wanted to go,” she said, stringing artificial cobwebs on her ceiling. “And I know he still wants to go! He’s not too upset that I haven't sold the tickets."
Miller is advertising her tickets on Craigslist and Facebook.
Stubhub.com bills itself as the largest secondary seller of tickets. The website, owned by eBay, is not a broker or scalper but brings ticketholders together with ticket buyers. Stubhub says the Heat are the hottest ticket in the NBA by far.
Here are, according to Stubhub, the highest and lowest prices for this year’s openers across the NBA:
Miami-Boston $385
Miami-Orlando $348
Houston-LA $246
Philly-Washington $59
Houston-Golden St. $54
Washington-Orlando $66
Stubhub says they have $80 tickets for sale for Friday’s game -- that’s their lowest. Their average is $325; the average price dropped slightly after the Heat loss to Boston this week but is more than six times more expensive than last year’s average price of $50 for the opener.
In fact, Stubhub says its data shows the Heat sold three times more tickets this year and earned 17 times more revenue.
Heat.com will have face value tickets. And the website will also have a link to officially sanctioned resellers of season tickets.
All this information leaves Pam and Bill with two tickets they cannot sell.
"I'm a big Heat fan,” says Bill wearing his Heat jersey while assembling a mannequin of Freddy Krueger. “I'd like to go to the party. But I like the Heat more.” So he may be happy if the tickets don’t sell after all.
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