I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
On Thursday night, I came up with a strange idea; instead of buying Warriors tickets on pre-sale to resell, I thought to myself, “Why not just give them to a pair of deserving fans?”
Ticket prices have skyrocketed for the Bay Area’s only NBA team recently, pricing most of the longtime, die-hard fans out of the market. With housing prices skyrocketing, the influx of new residents working at all these growing companies, the pressure is on and is squeezing the culture and the people out of the area.
Sure, the Bay Area has always had boom and bust times, and this is nothing new. The cost of living will skyrocket, then a market correction happens, and the squeeze happens. The hard-working folks who had jobs that could barely pay for their lives here suddenly don’t even have a job, things shuffle around, people bleed away to other, cheaper areas like the Central Valley, Oregon, Nevada, the Southwest, or go back home to the Midwest or East Coast.
Sporting events, you might say, are an expensive luxury. People shouldn’t spend money on them if they can’t afford to. And that’s partly true. But for many, having a sports team, enjoying a game, having heroes will give them hope, comfort, and respite from the daily grind of survival. They can live in a moment, they can support victory and feel part of something that’s going somewhere. And maybe that feeling of being a part of something and not giving up can influence and change their daily lives.
But most of that is beside the point, really, and on Friday morning the pre-sale hit. I texted my fiancée as I landed a pair of the cheapest tickets possible in my cart and asked her-
So, I bought them.
Then I wrote some words here on Medium, and posted it on Twitter. To help spread the word, I hit up a couple of mostly fan-driven Warriors Twitter accounts, and let it go.
As of now, 17,000 people have seen the tweet. 1,200 have clicked-through. 400 have read the Medium post. And about 60 have messaged me directly on Twitter with their stories. In a little under an hour, it all ends and I’ll start reading. And that’s when I’ll be put in the uncomfortable position of making a tough decision, because there will only be one winner. My fiancée will help me decide who is the worthiest, in our opinions. I’ll have to explain to everyone who wasn’t selected why someone was more worthy than them.
There’s a lot of emotion going on here; I already feel bad, feel guilty I can’t help everyone out. I wish I could do more. What started out as being part social experiment, and mostly support for a team that the Bay loves so much will end up being an emotional rollercoaster for me and probably for many of the folks who messaged me.
The only consolation I can offer anyone is that yes, not all of you are going to go. Yes, only one of you will receive this pair of tickets. But I won’t be there either. I’m giving away what’s mine to somebody else, and I’ll join the rest of you on the sidelines at home or a local sports bar.
