On Wednesday, a UPS truck pulled up to Sports Authority on Peachtree Road with a big delivery — eight boxes of Atlanta Hawks gear containing 18 shirts per box — double the store's inventory of Hawks apparel.
It had arrived just in time.
“(Wednesday) was a really big day,” said Drew Wise, a store manager. “People were buying a lot of shirts.”
Shirts, hats, tickets — if it says Atlanta Hawks, it’s hot right now.
Even bandwagon fans — the ones who only starting paying attention when the Hawks made the playoffs — know the details of the team's rocky path. How they haven't won a league championship since 1958, which kind of doesn't count since back then they were known as the St. Louis Hawks. And how they hadn't even made it to a conference final since 1970. For decades the Hawks were not the talk of the town. Now they are winning converts.
Customers don’t usually walk into Sports Authority talking about the Hawks, Wise said. The Falcons, yes. The Braves, always. But on the eve of game one against the Cleveland Cavaliers, a customer strolled in, proclaimed himself a die-hard Chicago Bulls fan and plunked a Hawks shirt on the checkout counter. “He was taking people to the Hawks game,” Wise said. ” He said, ‘It pains me to buy a Hawks shirt, but I have to be in uniform.’”
Wise has worked in sporting goods stores across the metro area and says the Hawks selection of shirts and hats has always been pretty paltry. Lately though, you may find yourself plowing through double racks of Hawks gear placed right up front before you can get to anything else in the store.
Scoring a team shirt is one thing. Getting a ticket to the playoff games is another. The best seats are scarce and often only available in singles.
The number of fans looking for Hawks tickets jumped 80 percent between the first round and the semi-finals and another 60 percent between the semi-finals and the finals, according to data from online ticket re-seller Razorgator.com. And we know what happens to ticket prices when demand goes up.
The average price of a first round Hawks ticket was $400, for the conference semifinals it was $625 and for the conference finals, it’s up to $998.
Tickets range in price from $99 (for a terrace baseline seat) to $459 through Ticketmaster. While tickets at resale range from about $100 up to one ticket listed at $11,459 (reportedly by a delusional reseller.) Of course, actual ticket prices fluctuate constantly, so nothing is ever certain.
On Thursday, for $3,500 you could get a front row courtside seat at Philip Arena. Double that and you could bring a friend to sit next to you. You each would enjoy a $15 food and beverage credit, access to the Jim Ellis Audi lounge and waiter service.
By comparison, with average ticket prices of $436 and $727, fans of the Cleveland Cavaliers and Houston Rockets respectively are practically getting a steal on playoff tickets.
Only the Golden State Warriors have an average playoff ticket price higher than the Hawks. Their fans will pay an average of $1,500 to check them out in the conference finals — their first one in 39 years.
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