You are a basketball fan captivated by the sudden, stirring rise to prominence of the Golden State Valkyries. They will host Game 1 of the WNBA Finals on Saturday, and you're interested in checking out the scene at Chase Center rather than watching on television.
Prepare to pay a premium.
Not surprisingly, tickets for the series between the Valkyries and Atlanta Dream are commanding big money on the secondary market. Tickets for Saturday's opener are selling for an average price more than four times higher than last year's Game 1 of the Finals (Las Vegas-Phoenix) on StubHub, according to a company spokesperson, and more than triple the price of Game 1 two years ago (New York-Minnesota).
As of Thursday afternoon, the cheapest Game 1 tickets on StubHub.com were selling for $228 in the upper level above the baseline - and that was standing-room-only. Seats in the upper half of the lower bowl ranged from $448 to $1,108 per ticket.
There was significantly more availability for Game 2 on Monday night, at comparable prices - though some seats close to the court were listed for $2,397.
The cost climbs even higher for a potential Game 7, which would be played (if necessary) in San Francisco on Oct. 31. The cheapest ticket was $491, most seats in the upper half of the lower bowl were going for more than $1,000 and tickets near the court ranged from $3,200 to $4,600.
If these prices seem steep, well, that's an understandable reaction.
This is the most expensive WNBA Finals on StubHub in at least six years, the spokesperson wrote in response to the Chronicle's email inquiry. The average ticket prices are more than double the previous high, set during that Liberty-Lynx series in 2024.
The cheapest Game 7 ticket costs more than twice as much as the cheapest Game 1 ticket, per StubHub. San Francisco's two guaranteed home games have nearly twice as many tickets listed as the two in Atlanta (Game 3 on Wednesday night and Game 4 on Oct. 24); and the cheapest seats in San Francisco cost about twice as much as those in Atlanta.
Also worth noting: There were still tickets available on valkyries.com as of Thursday afternoon, through TicketMaster. Those "verified resale tickets" started at $206 for the upper bowl, high above the action, and were as expensive as $6,490 for courtside club seats.
Golden State expects capacity crowds for Games 1 and 2. The Valkyries have sold out all 44 regular-season home games in the team's two years of existence, plus all four home playoff games this season.
The prices through the team/TicketMaster are not dramatically different from those on StubHub and other resellers. Earlier this week, a spokesperson for TicketIQ.com pegged the average get-in price for Games 1 and 2 at $220 - nearly four times as high as what the company tracked for last year's Finals.
Some more context: The price for Game 1 of the 2022 NBA Finals between the Warriors and Boston Celtics (also at Chase) started at $697, more than three times as high as this matchup between the Valkyries and Dream.
The increase in Valkyries ticket prices, compared to the regular season, was widely expected. One season-ticket holder said last month that his per-seat, per-game price spiked from $50 in the regular season to $65 for the first round of the playoffs, $95 for the semifinals and $175 for the Finals.
That increase of 250% between the regular season and Finals was consistent with an earlier SFGate story, which reported a lower-bowl seat costing $95 in the regular season jumped to $325 for the Finals, an increase of 242%. (SFGate and the Chronicle are both owned by Hearst but operate separate newsrooms.)
In a Chronicle interview last month, team president Jess Smith acknowledged the Valkyries set postseason ticket prices knowing demand would soar - and she suggested they obviously wanted to keep resellers from profiting on under-priced tickets.
"For any event, like different concerts or festivals, it's about the demand for what the experience is," Smith said. "So there's high demand in the postseason, and I think there's also a reality to making sure that demand is kept in the ecosystem as much as you can. …
"You're building a product and you want to price it accordingly. This is the best basketball to watch right now, and it's up to us to make sure we're driving that business."
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There’s more to San Francisco with the Chronicle. Subscribe today for just 25¢.This article originally published at Valkyries tickets command eye-popping prices, four times higher than 2025 WNBA Finals.