Tag: tickets

Categories
Dallas Mavericks

Around the Rim: Dallas is dancing


1. Dirk saves the best for last
Thanks to a last-second dagger from Dirk Nowitzki, the Mavs are in the playoffs. With the scored tied at 94 apiece, Nowitzki got a trey to fall with 0.9 seconds on the clock and Dallas secured a seed in the second season. Nowitzki scored a game-high 32 points in the 97-94 home floor victory to go along with 21 points – all in the second half – from Jason Terry. The twosome was basically impossible to stop down the stretch as they combined for 25 points in the fourth quarter. After picking up a big time road win in New Orleans on Tuesday, the Jazz returned to their disappointing ways away from home. Utah is now 17-23 on the road, but thanks to its division title, it will have homecourt advantage in the opening round regardless of how their regular season ends.

2. Warriors dealt a brutal blow

For the Nuggets and the Warriors, last night’s battle was perhaps the most important game to date for either team. In the end, Allen Iverson and the Nuggets proved too difficult a challenge and laid claim to a one game lead in the home stretch of an intense playoff race. A.I. posted 33 points in the 114-105 win at Golden State and the Nuggets finally have a measure of breathing room. Carmelo Anthony added 25 points, nine rebounds and five steals while J.R. Smith came off the bench to score 24. Led by Baron Davis’ third triple-double of the season (20 pts, 10 reb, 11 ast), all five starters for the Warriors finished in double-figures. But the numbers mean nothing at this point because the loss was devastating for Golden State. The Warriors almost have to win their final three games while praying the Nuggets drop at least two.

3. LA beats LA in LA
The Lakers only got 16 points out of Kobe Bryant last night against the Clippers and that was 16 more than they needed. Los Angeles grabbed a road victory by pounding the Clippers 106-78. What was briefly a rivalry between the two L.A. clubs has again turned into a manhandling. On Thursday, Luke Walton had the honors of personally dismantling the Clips by scoring 18 points while Lamar Odom went off for a double-double with 14 points and 13 rebounds. The Lakers are still trying to catch New Orleans for the top seed in the playoffs, but need to move up another 1 ½ games to do so. Coincidentally, the two just so happen to be playing each other tonight.

Thursday’s Player of the Day: Allen Iverson @ Golden State 48 min, 33 pts (FG: 12-21, 3FG: 1-2, FT: 8-12), 3 reb, 9 ast, 3 stl

Friday’s Game to Watch: New Orleans (55-23) @ Los Angeles Lakers (54-25)
This game has a whole slew of storylines. First off, the clubs are battling it out for conference supremacy with Nawlins currently holding a slight (1 ½ game) lead over the Lakers. To date, the Hornets own a 2-1 advantage in head-to-head battles this season, including a 118-104 victory in Los Angeles back in November. But, perhaps, the most compelling reason to watch this game has to do with the matchup between the two most popular candidates for league MVP. Kobe Bryant is the most explosive scorer in the league and he’s become one of the best team players in the league, averaging 28.7 points, 6.4 rebounds and 5.4 assists per game. Meanwhile, Chris Paul is playing out of his mind this season, averaging 21.2 points and posting league-best numbers in assists (11.5) and steals (2.7) per game.

Buzzer Beater: Good news for Miami Heat fans, if there are any left. The team is desperate to get people back into the arena after an embarrassing 14-64 season, which means cheap seats!

The team with the NBA’s worst record is offering $10-per-game season tickets for 2008-09.

The Miami Heat announced the “Ten Gets You In!” promotion on Wednesday. The seats selling for $10 are in the upper deck behind the baselines.

Get ’em while they’re hot!

Categories
College Basketball

Odds and Ends: Forget 2008, 2009 March Madness is upon us


We don’t even have one game of this year’s tournament under our belts yet and already the NCAA is about to start accepting application for the 2009 Final Four in Detroit. Of course, when tickets are as hot as Final Four tickets are you need to get on the ball early. You know what they say; the early bird catches all the early bird specials.

The cheapest tickets will cost $150, which is a bargain: Tickets to next month’s games in San Antonio are selling online for $2,500 or more.

In other news…

[MMAScraps.com]: It’s an ass whooping no matter what language it’s in.

[The 700 Level]: Phillies have “Bring Your Marmoset Monkeys To Work Day.”

[Balls Deep Sports]: Don’t worry, Terry Bradshaw remains zany after the football season is over.

[Philly.com]: Charles Barkley can relate to Allen Iverson’s return to Philadelphia.

[The Big Lead]: Mark Cuban, Now Directing Hatred at MMA Writers.

[Golf Spelled Backwards*]: So funny we forgot to laugh.

[SportingNews.com]: Terrelle Pryor is not for hire anymore. Sorry Big Blue.

[TodaysTMJ4.com]: Shocking Brett Favre news out of Green Bay. He’s planning to return to Lambeau…sorta.

Categories
Chicago Cubs

Watch the Cubs choke again for a mere $75,000


Chicago Cubs fans are some of the most loyal, dedicated and passionate fans you can find anywhere in the world of baseball. And when we say “loyal, dedicated and passionate,” what we really mean is obscenely wealthy!

The Chicago Board Options Exchange on Monday opened an auction of 71 new season tickets. The spots are next to the dugout on the third-base line. The highest bid for each set is visible online. By Monday evening, the highest offer was $75,000 for a set of four tickets. (That’s $18,750 per season ticket or just over $264 per seat, per game.)

The auction, which continues at cubs.com through March 13, is part of a deal that gives the CBOE naming rights to the new seats.

Naming rights, huh? “Steve Bartman’s Bleachers” has a nice ring to it if you ask us.

Links:

[SunTimes.com]: $75,000 for Cubs tix?

Categories
NFL General

Super Bowl tickets are expensive; don’t forget you’re gonna have to watch Eli too


We know that the chance to see a perfect 19-0 season doesn’t come around very often, but this is starting to get just a little out of hand. Don’t you people have kids you want to send to college?

Asking prices for the Feb. 3 game range from $2,450 to $19,446 at StubHub, a unit of eBay Inc. and the biggest of the online resellers. Officials there say the average price so far is $4,300 for tickets that the National Football League originally priced at either $700 or $900.

“You gotta mortgage your home to get into the game,” said Michael Hershfield, a former lawyer who recently started the ticketing Web site LiveStub.com. “There’s this recipe that’s been spiced up for a very exciting, very hot event. With all the changes in the industry, this combination has created this current wave of supply and demand.”

RazorGator Chief Executive Jeff Lapin, who is predicting total sales will set a record, is amazed what buyers are willing to pay. Tickets on his Web site are listed between $2,700 and $7,200. “I’m telling my friends to buy now because it looks like it’s going to be tight,” he said.

StubHub figures show the march higher of scalped tickets in recent years. Tickets it handled for last year’s game between the Bears and the Colts averaged $4,004. That was sharply higher than the Steelers-Seahawks in 2006 at $3,009, the Eagles-Patriots in 2005 at $2,659, the Patriots-Panthers in 2004 at $2,290, and the Raiders-Buccaneers in 2003 at $2,767.

Considering the University of Phoenix Stadium will seat around 75,000 on game day, we’re talking about a whole lotta the greenbacks. Even with an expensive divorce settlement ahead, we know Shaq Daddy can foot the bill, but what about us regular Joe Six Packs? We’re going to have to sell our organs to get through the gates? Aww, screw it; if we’re dropping a load of cash, it’s going to be at the Lingerie Bowl and it’s going to be all in one dollar bills!

Links:

[CBS2.com]: Super Bowl LXII Tix Fetch Record Prices

Categories
Green Bay Packers

Some Packers fans braved the frozen tundra only to get booted from Lambeau


If your team can’t make the championship game then you might as well make some money off the event, right? Eh, only if you want to watch the next three decades worth of NFC Championship games on a correctional center’s rec room television.

A 41-year-old Chicago man has been charged with five counts of forgery for selling counterfeit NFC Championship game tickets.

Kenneth Lee collected more than $4,000 from a handful of people after selling them tickets through the Web site craigslist, according to a criminal complaint filed in Brown County Circuit Court.

Lee was one of five people arrested for selling fake tickets to the game. The four others did not appear in court Tuesday.

About a dozen people paid between $300 and $900 for counterfeit tickets to the game. Some fans didn’t find out their tickets were fake until they sat in the seats and were removed from the stadium by an usher once people with real tickets showed up, police said.

Face value for tickets to Sunday’s game was $148.

A cash bond of $50,000 was issued for Lee, who is scheduled to appear in court again Jan. 29. He faces up to 30 years in prison and $50,000 in fines if convicted.

Wow, 30 years in the slammer for forging tickets!! And Michael Vick might be in an NFL uniform in how long?? Did our counterfeiter electrocute someone we don’t know about?

Links:

[ CBS2Chicago.com]: Chicagoan Charged With Forgery Of Packers Tix

Categories
Green Bay Packers

Tickets? I don’t need no stinkin’…oh, wait, I needed that


We’ve made our share of dumb moves over the years, but nothing as absent-minded as this. Unless, of course, you count that time we passed around our Super Bowls rings at a party, but that’s beside the point. Let’s stick to the subject at hand which is Rev. Walter Hermanns’ good friend who did him the favor of shredding one of his NFC championship game tickets. Yea, you heard us right.

Hermanns, who has multiple sclerosis and uses a wheelchair, was getting some help from a friend last Friday when he asked him to take care of a stack of papers left in a bin for shredding.

When his friend got to four Green Bay Packers tickets bundled together with a rubber band, he took off the band, put one in the shredder and then stopped short.

“Something rang a bell and he said, ‘Are you sure you want to shred these?”‘ Hermanns said.

Too late. The ticket was in shreds.

They emptied the shredder, collected pieces of the ticket and put them in a plastic bag. A call to the Packers’ ticket office remedied the situation, but not without some explaining.

“It almost sounded like they had heard crazy stories like this before,” Hermanns said.

Luckily, everything worked out because he purchased the tickets with a credit card through a special lottery for handicapped seating and still had the other three tickets remaining, so he’ll be freezing his ass off at Lambeau just like everyone else on Sunday. We’re just relieved that they weren’t this guy’s tickets.

Links:

[WJZ.com]: Man Accidentally Shred NFC Championship Ticket

Categories
College Football

Fans? Hawaii don’t need no stinkin’ fans


The Hawaii football team busted its asses all year long to go undefeated and earn a BCS bowl bid, but now that they’ve done the unthinkable, the school has gone out and done the unthinkable.

The university decided not to take their full allotment of tickets for the Sugar Bowl on New Years Day, thus turning the valuable tickets and seats over to an elated group of Bulldog faithful. Georgia gained 4,000 extras tickets in the exchange, bringing their total to 21,500 while dropping Hawaii down to 13,500 tickets. Needless to say, Warriors fans were not happy. And that was before Vili the Warrior even made the announcement on the late local newscast.

With Hawaii quickly selling out its reduced allotment of 13,500 tickets by Tuesday, many angry Warriors’ fans and season-ticket holders were left scrambling to find tickets to the school’s first bowl game outside the Aloha State since the 1992 Holiday Bowl.

Tickets, ranging from $125 to $145, were first made available to the Warriors’ 23,000 season-ticket holders and sold out quickly. Tickets were supposed go on sale to the general public Wednesday, but that never happened.

The university has created a waiting list and is offering to buy back tickets if purchasers were unable to make travel arrangements.

Guess June Jones isn’t the only islander who acts irrationally and then later comes to regret it.

Turns out that Hawaii is trying to get the Sugar Bowl to take some responsibility for this gaffe by saying that they didn’t think they could sell all the tickets and that the move was “at the suggestion of the Sugar Bowl, who was trying to accommodate the SEC team with more tickets to satisfy their demand.”

Sugar Bowl officials say it was Hawaii’s decision.

“They chose not to take their full allotment. That was Hawaii’s decision,” Sugar Bowl spokesman Duane Lewis said. “We definitely didn’t tell them not to take it, it was their choice.

We know that traveling from Hawaii to the mainland is a bitch, but this isn’t the 1992 Holiday Bowl, their last bowl appearance in the continental states. This is a coveted BCS bowl and you’re a measly WAC school, those things should be flying like hotcakes. At least give your fans the opportunity to buy the tickets before you give the other team an even greater `home field feel’ advantage. No wonder nobody wanted you guys to crack the top 12 in the BCS, you treat your own fans and team worse than you treat the opposition.

What’s next, are you going to conduct a raffle amongst the Gainesville population for your share of seats in the Swamp at next season’s opener?

Links:

[MSNBC.com]: Hawaii angers fans by giving tickets to Georgia

Categories
MLB General

To protect and serve, ourselves


What are the perks of being a major metropolitan police officer in America today? Well, the pay is decent, they offer a good retirement plan, medical and dental are included, and as an officer you are free to pick and choose what you want to use as your own personal property from the evidence collected throughout your shift. What? That last one isn’t an actual benefit? Somebody might want to conduct a procedural seminar in St. Louis because the boys in blue are under a completely different impression.

Nine or ten different officers are being investigated by the St. Louis Police Department for allegedly using about 30 confiscated tickets to last year’s World Series after the tickets were taken out of the hands of scalpers on the streets. The tickets were dispersed amongst the officer’s family and friends before being returned to the evidence room for storage. The crafty coppers were able to pull off the ploy because Busch Stadium no longer tears patron’s tickets, but instead use a scanner to electronically read the tickets. The value of the tickets varied from $50 to $250 and the incident could get the crooked cops canned.

Exactly who is St. Louis employing to keep the streets safe? Our guess is that Lt. Jim Dangle played a role in all of this.

Links:

[SI.com]: Report: police used seized Series tix