Courtside Seats at NBA Finals Game 7 Selling for $30K Apiece

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If you want to bring your talent to South Beach to see the Miami Heat take on the San Antonio Spurs in Game 7 of the NBA Finals, you better bring lots of money.

When 2013 NBA Finals tickets first went on sale in early June, there was no mad rush to snatch up every seat, at any price. In fact, the Miami Herald noted that there were still plenty of Miami home game tickets available at face value in the higher levels several hours after they first hit the market. Still, from the get-go brokers were able to command big money for courtside seats in Miami—as much as $17,500 per ticket, one broker boasted at the time.

Now, though, with Game 7 set to tip off on Thursday, coming on the heels of one of the wildest, most entertaining games of all time in Tuesday’s Game 6, prices have surged.

Heat star LeBron James called Tuesday’s overtime thriller the “best game I’ve ever been a part of,” and sports writers have described the game as an “instant classic,” perhaps even the best NBA Finals game ever.

(MORE: NBA Finals: Three Pressing Questions for Game 7)

Demand soars for any Game 7, but Tuesday’s exciting come-from-behind Heat win seems to have pushed ticket prices to the next level for Thursday’s deciding game. The Sun Sentinel reports that one broker in South Florida recently sold four courtside seats for $30,000 each, “probably the most expensive we’ve sold for a Heat game,” the company owner said. Online sellers such as VividSeats.com and StubHub.com have been listing standing-room-only tickets from the high $300s to low $500s, lower-level seats for $1,000 to $3,000, courtside seats for as much as $37,663, and admission to an American Airlines Arena suite is going as high as $57,000.

SeatGeek, an aggregator of tickets sold on the secondary market, estimated that as of June 11, the average price for Game 7 tickets in Miami was $949 (more than double the average for Games 3 and 4 in San Antonio, btw). A quick look at SeatGeek’s roundup of available tickets on Thursday now shows that the majority of listings have asking prices over $1,000, so surely the average ticket price is now significantly north of $949.

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Even so, tonight’s game in Miami is not the priciest NBA Game 7 ever. That unofficial title most likely belongs to 2010’s Game 7, when online auctions pushed prices in Los Angeles to over $81,000 for a courtside seat to see the Lakers take on the Boston Celtics.