NBA ticket prices on the secondary sports ticket market will drop as the basketball game draws closer. One exception to this rule happens when a team has only one home game in the few days after Christmas. Step back and think about the logic driving the extra demand for NBA tickets in this situation.
First, fans often are taking vacation from work and out of school over the Holidays. Second, fans of the home team who now live out of state return to where they grew up for Christmas. Third, spouses who can’t find the perfect gift for someone who has everything will fall back on sports tickets. If there is only one home game that week, there will be plenty of buyers for tickets for that particular game and many season ticket holders will also want to attend the game.
A couple of examples illustrate this taking place. First, the Chicago Bulls took on the Milwaukee Bucks on Tuesday December 28th. Basketball tickets in Section 112 row 17 sold for $145 on October 20th and by December 11th went for $235 in the same section and row. The same ticket price increase happened throughout all the other sections in the arena. In fact, some areas saw ticket prices more than double! An example of this is Bulls tickets in section 304 row 9 sold for $22 on November 14th and someone who waited too long ended up paying $46 on December 20th.
Another team experiencing ticket price increases for their NBA home game was the Utah Jazz against the Portland Trailblazers. The Utah Jazz went out on a pre-Christmas road trip and then finally had a home game on December 27th before they left for another two games on the road. Actual ticket sales for the December 27th game on the reseller market demonstrate this point. Someone had to be laughing at the number of dimes they saved buying lower bowl tickets in Section 3 row 27 for $43 on September 14th. By mid-December tickets in the same section and row went for $105 on Stubhub. Tickets in the upper deck doubled in price from early October to early December as fans planning to return home for the holidays bought up Utah Jazz vs. Portland Trailblazer tickets in droves.
The history lesson for you is if you plan to buy NBA tickets to attend your favorite NBA team over the Christmas holiday and there is only one game just after Christmas, plan early to buy your NBA tickets.