Economic Mechanisms Related to NBA Tickets Supply and Demand

Economics is everywhere. It is the study of people and their choices. It is so common that I am using economics right now. The benefits of spending my Thursday evening writing this paper outweighs the cost of not attending to a boring college party and procrastinating until one hour before the assignment is due. One of the most important terms in economics is scarcity. Many say money makes the world go round; but if there was an unlimited amount of dollars in the world, would money still be so important?

My favorite sport to watch is basketball; this past months, I watched almost the entire NBA season. I am a fan of Golden State Warriors, and as any sport lover, one of my biggest dreams is to watch a game in their arena. Let’s use the last season NBA finals, Golden State Warriors vs. Cleveland Cavaliers, as an example. These games were the most expected finals in the last years, with millions of people planning on watching the games on TV and thousands wanting to get tickets (high demand). Unfortunately, the Oracle Arena has a limited capacity of 19,596 seats (scarcity) (Bielik). Thus the supply and demand curve tells us the price is going to be high.

The price of one ticket for Game 1 or 2 had a range from $700 on the lower level to $21,053 on the courtside (Bielik). If the demand for the NBA finals lessens, then the prices will drop; but then who would not like to see Stephen Curry scoring perfect threes and Lebron James dunking over the opponents.

Utilizing a simple graph of supply and demand as model, we can see a point were the two lines intercept, that is the equilibrium. Is the “perfect scenario” in which the NBA will be content with the amount of money earned per game, and the spectators will be satisfied with the cost paid for the ticket. In the article of ESPN, Rovell explains that “the Warriors offered the Cavaliers lower-level tickets... to buy for their friends and family for $1,300 each.” They also mention that this price is almost twice the cost of last year, the higher prices are mainly due to the high demand for the stellar game. Even tough many fanatics bought the over-priced tickets, the Cleveland players where not happy paying almost double the price for a ticket; so they did not buy any.

Just as mentioned in the beginning, economics is about human decisions. Some people will be willing to buy this expensive tickets to watch their favorite team, because, for them, experiencing a NBA final is worth more than the couple of thousand dollars they are paying. At the same time, for NBA, receiving millions of dollars from (millionaires) fanatics is worth more than the show they have to prepare.