When fans go to a high school basketball game, they usually anticipate paying $5 for a ticket … if that. For fans who were absolutely set on seeing Saturday's matinee face-off between Las Vegas (Nev.) Bishop Gorman High and Las Vegas (Nev.) Findlay Prep -- both of which are ranked in the RivalsHigh 100's Top 25 -- they had to shell out a lot, lot more.
Findlay Prep star Winston Shepard â€" Rivals.com
Because of a venue shift from UNLV's home court at the Thomas & Mack Center to the much smaller adjoining Cox Pavilion, the Gorman-Findlay crosstown face-off couldn't sit nearly as many fans as wanted to get in. As detailed by the Las Vegas Sun, the 2 p.m. Saturday game couldn't be hosted by the Thomas & Mack Center because UNLV also played on Saturday evening, a factor which was semented by the Gorman-Findlay game's telecast on ESPNU, whcih made it unfeasible to have two different television crews come into and out of the Thomas & Mack Center in a matter of hours.
Regardless of the reasoning behind the venue switch, hosting the crosstown rivalry game at the Cox Pavilion created a bit of a ticket shortage. In fact, there was such high unmet demand that a few selected seats were posted on Stub Hub for the game.
Now, the Gorman-Findlay game is almost certainly not the first time that high school tickets have made their way on to Stub Hub. Yet it probably is the first time that re-sold prep tickets were listed at more than $100 a pop.
On Friday evening, less than 24 hours before the game's tip off, tickets had a high of $166 per seat. In total, eight tickets were listed on Friday, ranging from $99 to that $166 high. The Sun reported that earlier on Friday 12 tickets had ranged from $90 to $201.
By Saturday morning those prices had decreased … though only slightly. The top ticket price among seven available was $132, with the midrange price listed at $115 and the "cheap" seats costing $92.
Of course, the adjusted supply means that five people actually bought $100 or more seats to a high school basketball game, which is a fairly astonishing concept in itself.
Luckily for anyone who decided to plump up the change to see the game, the showdown pretty much lived up to the hype. Still, in the long run it's astonishing that what should be the seminal game of the 2011-12 Nevada boys basketball season will probably always be known more for how much people paid to see the game than what they actually saw.
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